{"id":1391,"date":"2010-05-16T01:41:08","date_gmt":"2010-05-16T07:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1391"},"modified":"2010-06-13T18:20:39","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T00:20:39","slug":"hey-lasers-happy-50th-birthday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1391","title":{"rendered":"Hey Lasers &#8211; Happy 50th birthday!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/tn_LaserFestLogo.png\" width=\"75\" class=\"alignleft\" height=\"200\"  \/>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.laserfest.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">LaserFest website<\/a>, today, May 16, 2010, marks the 50th anniversary of the laser.\u00a0 First demonstrated by a team lead by American physicist Ted Maiman.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lasers\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>In 1917, Albert Einstein established the theoretic foundations for the LASER and the MASER in the paper Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation); via a re-derivation of Max Planck\u2019s law of radiation, conceptually based upon probability coefficients (Einstein coefficients) for the absorption, spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation; in 1928, Rudolf W. Ladenburg confirmed the existences of the phenomena of stimulated emission and negative absorption;\u00a0 in 1939, Valentin A. Fabrikant predicted the use of stimulated emission to amplify \u201cshort\u201d waves;\u00a0 in 1947, Willis E. Lamb and R. C. Retherford found apparent stimulated emission in hydrogen spectra and effected the first demonstration of stimulated emission;\u00a0 in 1950, Alfred Kastler (Nobel Prize for Physics 1966) proposed the method of optical pumping, experimentally confirmed, two years later, by Brossel, Kastler, and Winter.\u00a0 On 16 May 1960, Theodore Maiman demonstrated the first functional laser at the Hughes Research Laboratories,\u00a0 capable of producing short pulses.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course lasers are what power the Climbers in the Power-Beaming Competition at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorgames.org\" target=\"_blank\">Space Elevator Games<\/a> and lasers are, in all probability, going to be at least part of the power equation of a real Space Elevator.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.laserfest.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">LaserFest website<\/a> is very cool &#8211; lots of interesting videos and articles &#8211; it&#8217;s well worth a visit or two.<\/p>\n<p>So, happy 50th birthday congratulations to the Laser!<\/p>\n<p><em>(Hat tip to\u00a0 Alan Boyle&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com\/archive\/2010\/05\/14\/2307335.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Cosmic Log<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>(Update June 13, 2010 &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/pc.de\/\" target=\"_blank\">Patricia C.<\/a> has translated this article in Belorussian.\u00a0 You can find that article <a href=\"http:\/\/pc.de\/pages\/hey-lasers-be\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.\u00a0 Thanks Patricia!) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the LaserFest website, today, May 16, 2010, marks the 50th anniversary of the laser.\u00a0 First demonstrated by a team lead by American physicist Ted Maiman. From Wikipedia: In 1917, Albert Einstein established the theoretic foundations for the LASER and the MASER in the paper Zur Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum Theory of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}