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Laser Beams Deflected Off of Nothing but Air for First Time Ever in Breakthrough Patent Pending Process - The Debrief (thedebrief.org)
submitted 2 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Laser Beams Deflected Off of Nothing but Air for First Time Ever in Breakthrough Patent Pending Process - The Debrief::An international team of scientists report that they have successfully used acoustics to deflect laser beams in an engineering first.

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[–] 52 points 2 years ago (7 children)

considering the lab experiment with just one laser required a sound level of about 140 decibels that consume 20 gigawatts, I don't think holodecks are going to be a practical device.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Great points, but you know how things go. Proof of concept is a bloated laboratory implementation, then the tech gets smaller and more efficient over time. Next thing you know the sound is outside of human hearing range and the laser projector is fitted to a drone.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    More realisticly how things go, experimental research only works in lab conditions, clickbait article suggests it's coming next year, people make giant assumptions, people lose faith in science because the promised thing doesn't arrive

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    It was the laser that's 20 gigawatts, according to the article, which is notable because such a laser is hard to redirect.

    As for the viability of holodecks... Obviously the rest of your points are still valid, but one can only hope that someday we'll figure something out, the technology being impossible/unviable right now doesn't mean it'll stay that way. And this seems to show a theoretical possibility of manipulating light mid-air in the necessary way.

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