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From: john larkin <jl@650pot.com>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: how the laser happened
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2024 17:05:38 -0700
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On Sun, 23 Jun 2024 22:09:42 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

>john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 23 Jun 2024 18:08:52 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
>> <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 23 Jun 2024 16:39:56 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
>>>> <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On Sun, 23 Jun 2024 05:03:34 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On a sunny day (Sat, 22 Jun 2024 17:23:40 -0000 (UTC)) it happened
>>>>>> Cursitor Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote in
>>>>>> <v571as$3rs0j$2@dont-email.me>:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Sat, 22 Jun 2024 06:19:49 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On a sunny day (Fri, 21 Jun 2024 11:32:56 -0700) it happened john
>>>>>>>> larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote in
>>>>>>>> <1ghb7jt3882078r19n6jjgtirv25q27805@4ax.com>:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> On Fri, 21 Jun 2024 17:56:36 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> On Fri, 21 Jun 2024 06:05:21 -0700, john larkin <jl@650pot.com>
>>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> There was a thread somewhere above about photon wave/particle
>>>>>>>>>>> duality.
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> This is worth reading:
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> https://www.amazon.com/How-Laser-Happened-Adventures-Scientist/dp/
>>>>>>> 0195153766
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> Einstein, in one of his fits of genius, predicted in around 1916
>>>>>>>>>>> that under the right conditions, a photon could pass by an excited
>>>>>>>>>>> atom and the atom would kick in another photon, or add to the wave
>>>>>>>>>>> amplitude, depending on how you feel about these things. He called
>>>>>>>>>>> it stimulated emission. He also declared that the laws of
>>>>>>>>>>> thermodynamics made this effect impossible to use in practical
>>>>>>>>>>> situations.
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> In 1951, Charles Townes invented a work-around trick and built the
>>>>>>>>>>> maser, a gaseous microwave oscillator. His superiors thought he was
>>>>>>>>>>> crazy to dispute Einstein and almost threw him out of grad school,
>>>>>>>>>>> but it worked.
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> In 1960, Theodore Maiman at HRL made the first ruby laser, and Bell
>>>>>>>>>>> Labs soonafter made a HeNe.
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> What's interesting is that any decent neon sign shop could have
>>>>>>>>>>> built a HeNe laser in 1920.
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> HRL sounds like a very cool place, up in the hills above Malibu.
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> Wasn't that where Jane Mansfield used to go out bathing?
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Keep your mind on electronics, young man.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> The Getty Museum is in Malibu. Go there if you can. Hearst Castle,
>>>>>>>>> too,
>>>>>>>>> up the road a bit.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I've been to Malibu, even did some work there...
>>>>>>>> Did not go to any museum, but did go to the beach.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Did you see Jane? What about lobsters? Any lobsters around? 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Na, but some other beatiful women I met.
>>>>>> Last time we went looking for edible seaweed ...
>>>>> 
>>>>> Argh! Never mind. I believe Jane had terrible problems with lobsters when 
>>>>> she went out bathing in Malibu. But you don't know anything about that, 
>>>>> clearly. It obviously wasn't publicised in Holland.
>>>> 
>>>> This thread is about lasers, not lobsters. 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Well, Schawlow famously said, ?Anything will lase, if you hit it hard
>>> enough.?
>>> 
>>> I expect that includes lobsters. 
>>> 
>>> Cheers 
>>> 
>>> Phil Hobbs 
>> 
>> But no, seriously, there must be some laser action, or at least some
>> sort of stimulated emission, some sort of super-fluorescence, in
>> nature somewhere. 
>
>Sure. Cosmic masers occur in interstellar giant molecular clouds, for
>instance. 
>
>The lifetime of suitable upper states drops steeply with increasing energy,
>which means that visible laser action requires much stronger pumping. 
>
>While that can in principle happen naturally, it would be in places with a
>lot of other stuff going on, so it would be less noticeable. 
>
>You don’t have resonators in interstellar space, so it wouldn’t be highly
>directional. 
>
>Cheers 
>
>Phil Hobbs 

I was thinking about a biological laser too.

I could imagine an eyeball with some sort of stimulated emission
effect, in the vitreus humor or in the retina, to improve night
vision, basically a photon amplifier.

Nature seems to use any effect that's not flat impossible, whether
biologists approve or not.