With over 700 votes cast in the Laser Smackdown poll in honor of the 50th anniversary of the laser, laser cooling has opened a commanding 20-vote lead in the race to be the Most Amazing Laser Application of All Time. If you prefer one of the other options, you have only six hours left to change the final outcome:
Voting will remain open until midnight, with the ultimate winner announced on Monday, May 3rd. So get reading, and get voting. One vote per computer per user, please-- this is Serious Science.
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It is my duty as a blogger to mention lasers in this time of international laser celebration. This May is the 50th anniversary of the first lasers. Everyone knows a laser that they love, right? We all use them.
Voting has closed on the Laser Smackdown poll, with 772 people recording their opinion on the most amazing of the many things that have been done with lasers in the fifty years since the invention of the first working laser (see the Laserfest web site for more
I haven't posted much about life in the lab lately, because even though I'm getting to spend a bit of time in the lab, I've been so fried from this past term that I haven't had much energy for blogging.
In 1960, the first working laser was demonstrated, and promptly dubbed "a solution looking for a problem." In the ensuing fifty years, lasers have found lots of problems to solve, but there has been no consensus about which of the many amazing applications of lasers is the most amazing.
Damn it! I voted for spectroscopy like 30 times and it still got clobbered!