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.

    • sir_reginald@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Seasm0ke@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • echo64@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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

          • Seasm0ke@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Lol probably, we are definitely more on track for cyberpunk or idiocracy than star trek post scarcity socialist utopia

      • ThoGot@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It may be interesting to see how humidity and temperature influence the laser (or even other gases as mentioned in the article)

      • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year 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.