REGARD our TINY but POWERFUL LASER, suitable for very SMALL sharks Shrinking the scale of semiconductor materials to help build powerful quantum-computing systems has proved to be a real head-scratcher for scientists. However, boffins at Princeton University have come up with a device that they think could be a "major step forward" for the tech. The university's associate physics professor, …
As previous commenters have stated, a maser and a laser are different, although light and microwaves are just different forms of electromagnetic radiation, so both could be termed Electromagnetic Radiation Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Thus we can have a handy acronym covering both. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the eraser.
Some of us really old fogies remember that "LASER" (which is an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation") is actually derived from the term "MASER" ("Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation"). Problem was that they had trouble getting masers to work, but did get lasers to work, so young kids never heard of masers.
A maser (/ˈmeɪzər/) is a device that produces coherent electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission. The word "maser" is derived from the acronym MASER: "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation".
So either these guys are ignorant, or I have misunderstood.
I also wasn't happy about the 'microwave laser'.
I'm also unhappy about this line:
'the researchers explained that it uses about one-billionth the electric current needed to power a hair-dryer'.
At least tell us which model of hair-dryer so I can look up the specs!
Clever work, stupid communication.
Shirley they could have used more understandable units of measure. I mean we all know that hair driers need a lot of energy [citation needed] so saying that could mean anything.
Why not just state the number in terms of how it compares to the power used by a London bus to drive one beard second.
current != power. The maser could use the same amount of power if the voltage is a billion times higher than said hair dryer. Likewise it could use more or much less than one billionth the power.
In short it's about as useful as comparing the muzzle energy of a bullet to the thermal energy of a steaming hot mug of coffee. Sure, shooting a hot coffee might sound like fun, especially if filmed with one of those super high speed cameras, but it's one less bullet you'll have for the zombie invasion and you'll probably wish you had that coffee when it's your turn to keep watch.
"To get an idea of the scale of the teeny-tiny maser, the researchers explained that it uses about one-billionth the electric current needed to power a hair-dryer."
So you mean it uses 1 nano-hairdryer of current. I trust you will be adding this to your standards converter page at http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html
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