Oh happy day! Nature reports that a team of scientists at the University of California, Riverside have successfully created the formerly theoretical molecule known as Di-positronium. It can exist for only the tiniest fraction of a second, which is plenty long enough for one of its projected uses.
Get ready for it. It’s the gamma-ray annihilation laser.
The gamma-ray annihilation laser is a useful tool that falls into an important category, for me. That’s the category of “things I’d really like to have, but which I’d rather you didn’t”. Like the flying car.
Anyway loads of information about this, though – I’m happy to say – not enough that you can drop everything and cobble together a gamma-ray annihilation laser* of your own – are available at BBC News.
“The difference in the power available from a gamma-ray laser compared to a normal laser is the same as the difference between a nuclear explosion and a chemical explosion,” said Dr David Cassidy of the University of California, Riverside, and one of the authors of the paper.
*I just really like that name.
Yeah if it is dangerous and really of no good purpose someone will invent it.
My nephew workd as a programer_inventor for IBM. They have already been on this for a long time. There are actually supposed to be death rays that can originate from certain apparatus that have been put into space circling the Earth. The government will deny this of course.
Well, much as I like my death rays, there are lots of very useful purposes for these lasers. One is to use their pretty frightening power to jump-start a fusion reaction. A fusion reactor would give us a lot of very clean electricity, and I’d be in favor of that.
On the other hand there’s not much doubt that we’d find ways to make the lasers go boom. We monkeys love to make things go boom.