4 ms·

What are the applications?

• baybal2 8y ago
  A direct one is a thermometer, but I think a much more interesting one is a possibility of cooling things with a laser. You shine laser on something with strong anti Stokes luminescence, and cool it by having reemitted photons carrying away more energy from an object than being absorbed. Along the same lines, I suspect an efficient enough gas dynamic laser can be coerced into working as a heat pump. If true, that can revolutionize cooling in spacecrafts: ISS have to carry huge radiators weighting almost as much as its solar panels; imagine replacing them with relatively small lasers.
  • pfdietz 8y ago
    I've long thought that beamed power to spacecraft might be combined with laser cooling to achieve very high power/mass, which is needed for simultaneous high acceleration + high Isp.
    • mrfusion 8y ago
      How would the cooling help?
      • pfdietz 8y ago
        Any high Isp propulsion system is limited by the dissipation of waste heat and the need to radiate it. The mass of the radiators limits the acceleration. This is the defining difference between real spacecraft and Hollywood spacecraft.
  • b_tterc_p 8y ago
    Hmm. Could be used to adjust the trajectory of asteroids?
    • baybal2 8y ago
      I think just changing their trajectory with much easier kinetic means will work just fine.
• knolan 8y ago
  This could be very useful in photonics chips for ICT. Thermal management is a huge problem in this area.