Sound Over Laser: AudioLaser?
So, get this MIT have managed to transmit audio over laser. Somehow. So it’s AudioLaser – I guess?
Scientists over at MIT have figured out how to transmit audio over a laser beam. This is any type of audio, so that can be audio, it can be music anything at all. This is without a receiver either.
“Our system can be used from some distance away to beam information directly to someone’s ear… It is the first system that uses lasers that are fully safe for the eyes and skin to localize an audible signal to a particular person in any setting.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Charles M. Wynn via a press release.
The groundbreaking discovery was published in a paper in an journal called Optics Letters. The paper goes on to describe how an MIT team developed two differing methods of transmitting audio via laser.
How?
The way that the MIT researchers managed to do this was via a photoacoustic effect. This is the formation of soundwaves as a result of a material absorbing light. In their case they used water vapour that in the air, if they ‘swept’ a laser beam at the speed of sound. By changing the length of the sweeps they were able to encode different audible pitches.
AudioLaser – Safety
The MIT team want to use this tech to allow the transmission of audio in situations that can be quite dangerous. For example at a mass shooting. Authorities could beam instructions to those in trouble, without anyone else hearing.
“We hope that this will eventually become a commercial technology…There are a lot of exciting possibilities, and we want to develop the communication technology in ways that are useful.” researcher Ryan M. Sullenberger
(Futurism)
Keep up to date with everything How To Kill An Hour by signing up to our newsletter by clicking here!
Let us know what you think of the show by clicking here!
Click here to subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see more amazing ways to kill time!
Follow us on Twitch by clicking here!
