Playing Games With Moon-Art of Photography

Unbelievable stuff
The Real star of Photography who played games with the moon
Really Great pics & good art of photography

Pictures taken by Laurent Laveder from France

Nagarjuna

Sound of Light - a bright approach to wireless speakers

The Sound of Light system
Combining lighting with audio by using a light socket to power a wireless speaker is a two-in-one approach that appears to be gaining traction and this latest example - the Sound of Light lightspeaker - grabbed our attention on both the functionality and aesthetic fronts. The Sound of Light system uses a Texas Instruments 2.4 GHz Purepath Digital Signal Transmitter to set up a wireless link between an audio device such as an MP3 player, smartphone or tablet and up to four speakers within a 300 ft range.

Taking advantage of a lamp socket as a power source means the Sound of Light can be used in a wide range of locations. The system runs on 100V or 240V, accepts standard bulbs, is compatible with the iPhone and can also be paired with a sub woofer unit. A multi-function remote enables control of both audio output and lighting.

The Sound of Light is set for a June 2011 release. Pricing details are not yet available but we'll keep you posted. A similar offering from Klipsch, which has a 50 ft range but can can accommodate up to eight speakers, sells for US$249.
Sound of Light specifications:

Texas Instruments 2.4 GHz Purepath Wireless Digital Signal Transmitter

433 MHz Receiver For Handheld Remote Control operationRange of up to 300 ft.

Stereo RCA Input Jacks

Stereo 3.5mm Mini Input Jack

Pairing Push Button

Amplifier - 25Watt Texas Instruments Purepath Class D

Power Supply - Texas Instruments Switching Power

Supply for high efficiency and Energy Star EuP compliant

Each transmitter can operate up to 4 speaker lights

Channel Selection - Left-Mono-Right (Selector Switch)

Whamodyne Glass Speakers - traditional electronics in a unique new form

A set of speakers from Logitech are given a new lease on life in the Glass Speakers from Whamodyne
wondered what would happen if you took a diamond drill to a glass vase and then fed in some audio - the answer we've been looking for takes the shape of the Glass Speakers from Whamodyne. A set of Logitech S120 computer speakers have been stripped apart, the components forced into a pair of glass vases, each of which have then been mounted at a slight tilt on a hand-made birch plywood base. They're not as powerful or as slick as the precious-looking GLA-55 touch-sensitive speakers from Harman Kardon, but they are about a tenth of the price.


Inspired by the creations of designer Joey Roth, the Glass Speaker system has been constructed by making a circular hole in the bottom of two 7.5-inch long, 3.5-inch diameter glass vases with a diamond saw to accommodate a speaker each. To allow it to lie flush against the bottom of the upturned vase, the speaker is first mounted on a clear plastic disc and then fixed into position.

The system's amplifier board and a 120V AC power transformer are placed ship-in-bottle style inside the right Glass Speaker housing, with a volume pot and on/off switch on the outside. An LED on the amp board lets you know when the unit in on. The total RMS output of the speakers is 2.3W, with a frequency response of 50Hz - 20kHz. Connection to a computer, MP3 player or mobile device is via a 3.5 mm stereo jack.
The Glass Speakers offer something a little less ordinary for your device audio needs, and can be ordered from Whamodyne's Etsy store at a cost of US$89.

Invisible Phone: Answer Calls with Your Hand

We recently told you about a paper-thin electronic film that could stream-line your smartphone into something as thin and flexible as an index card, but some German researchers are now working on a system to complete the ultimate vanishing act.
Patrick Baudisch, professor of computer science at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, and his team of students are developing a device that turns the palm of your hand into an interface capable of performing the same actions as your smart phone. Instead of swiping and tapping your finger across your phone, you simply do so across your palm.
Their Imaginary Phone relies on a depth-sensitive camera, similar to ones used in Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox, that would detect the swiping and tapping motions on your hand. The concept also contains software to analyze the video and a wireless radio to send instructions back to your phone.
WIDE ANGLE: SMART PHONES
Baudisch and his colleagues believe the imaginary phone prototype could liberate users from actually having to physically retrieve a device when answering a call. Imagine answering your "hand" while stir-frying vegetables for dinner, planting tulip bulbs in the garden or scrubbing greasy plates in the sink without even needing to reach for a towel first.
In test runs of the device, the depth camera was affixed to a head-mounted rack that is anything but inconspicuous. However, the team envisions future models being fitted with a camera so small that it could easily integrate into clothing, for example, as the button of a shirt.
ANALYSIS: Are Smart Phones Worth It?
Grand marshaling the project is a study the team submitted to the User Inerface Software and Technology conference, held in Santa Barbara, Calif., this October. The study shows that participants could accurately recall the position of two-thirds of their smartphone apps on a blank phone and with similar accuracy on their palm. Apps used more frequently were able to be recalled with up to 80 percent accuracy.
Though we don't advocate blindfolding yourself and testing your Jedi smart phone skills, may the force be with you.

Google Music Beta invites now available

Invites for Google's new Music Beta cloud streaming service are now available to U.S. users
It's been a good while coming but Google's music streaming service has finally arrived. Called Music Beta, it's available by invitation only and restricted to U.S. users ahead of roll-out elsewhere. The service appears to be very similar to Amazon's Cloud Storage and Player, although no music is on sale directly from Google. Rather than measure the size of your collection by the gigabyte, however, Google will allow users to store up to 20,000 music tracks from their personal collection in an online vault, with no restrictions on bitrate. Music Beta offers users instant sync across devices, the ability to play selected music offline and intuitive playlist creation based on the mood of a selected track.
Google says that so long as the Beta tag remains, its Music service will be free to use. There's no indication at the moment when subscribers will be expected to pay for the service or how much it will cost, but Google has a history of keeping Beta tags in place for a good while and its track record in online storage would hint at the lower end of the cost scale.
Like the rather disappointing Music Search before it, the new service is initially being made available to U.S. users only, those wanting to take it for a spin will need to apply for an invitation. Users elsewhere in the world will have to wait for a staged roll-out.
Once the invitation is secured, you'll need to get your music collection from your computer to your online library via a Windows and Mac compatible Music Manager application. The service is limited to MP3, AAC, WMA and FLAC file formats which may cause some issues for old iDevice users and lovers of other formats like OGG and APE.
Google's choice to automate much of the management rather than allow users to get their hands under the hood will no doubt be welcomed by those wanting quick, painless access, but is not so good for control freaks or power music managers.

With the cloud library positively brimming with uploaded content, users can then access tunes through a web browser or up to eight devices running a dedicated Android app available for free (at the moment) download from Android Market.
As everything's stored in the cloud, the service offers instant sync between devices - so if you create a playlist on your home computer, it will be available straight away on your mobile device. If you have neither the time or the patience to create playlists then Music Beta offers to do it for you. Instant Mix will draw together 25 similar music tracks from your collection based on a chosen song to rock you hard or chill you out.
In theory at least, having your music collection available to you at all times sounds absolutely wonderful, but in reality such a service could quickly eat away at your monthly mobile allowance. To this end, Google has included the facility to manually select specific albums, artists or playlists or cache recently played music to play offline.
Although I feel that the new service is a welcome move in the right direction, Google will have to offer a lot more than this if it hopes to compete with Amazon's existing service and Apple's up and coming effort. Offering more user control for those that want it would be a good start, closely followed by catering for purchasing from within Music Beta itself.

Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook

1. The Facebook application itself sucks

Between the farms and the mafia wars and the "top news" (which always guesses wrong - is that configurable somehow?) and the myriad privacy settings and the annoying ads (with all that data about me, the best they can apparently do is promote dating sites, because, uh, I'm single) and the thousands upon thousands of crappy applications, Facebook is almost completely useless to me at this point. Yes, I could probably customize it better, but the navigation is ridiculous, so I don't bother. (And, yet, somehow, I can't even change colors or apply themes or do anything to make my page look personalized.) Let's not even get into how slowly your feed page loads. Basically, at this point, Facebook is more annoying than anything else.
Facebook is clearly determined to add every feature of every competing social network in an attempt to take over the Web (this is a never-ending quest that goes back to AOL and those damn CDs that were practically falling out of the sky). While Twitter isn't the most usable thing in the world, at least they've tried to stay focused and aren't trying to be everything to everyone.
I often hear people talking about Facebook as though they were some sort of monopoly or public trust. Well, they aren't. They owe us nothing. They can do whatever they want, within the bounds of the laws. (And keep in mind, even those criteria are pretty murky when it comes to social networking.) But that doesn't mean we have to actually put up with them. Furthermore, their long-term success is by no means guaranteed - have we all forgotten MySpace? Oh, right, we have. Regardless of the hype, the fact remains that Sergei Brin or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could personally acquire a majority stake in Facebook without even straining their bank account. And Facebook's revenue remains more or less a rounding error for more established tech companies.
While social networking is a fun new application category enjoying remarkable growth, Facebook isn't the only game in town. I don't like their application nor how they do business and so I've made my choice to use other providers. And so can you.
Dan Yoder is a serial entrepreneur and the VP of Engineering at Border Stylo, a Hollywood-based social media startup. He can be reached on Twitter as @dyoder.
Disclosure by Dan Yoder: I'm the VP of Engineering for a Hollywood-based social media startup, BorderStylo. The opinions expressed here are purely my own and are not in any way endorsed by my employer. While I do not see our applications as directly competitive to Facebook, nor have I presented them as such, it would be disingenuous not to mention this.
Thanks to David Harthcock for creating the great "Ban Facebook" graphic.

2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web

The so-called Open Graph API is named so as to disguise its fundamentally closed nature. It's bad enough that the idea here is that we all pitch in and make it easier than ever to help Facebook collect more data about you. It's bad enough that most consumers will have no idea that this data is basically public. It's bad enough that they claim to own this data and are aiming to be the one source for accessing it. But then they are disingenuous enough to call it "open," when, in fact, it is completely proprietary to Facebook. You can't use this feature unless you're on Facebook. A truly open implementation would work with whichever social network we prefer, and it would look something like OpenLike. Similarly, they implement just enough of OpenID to claim they support it, while aggressively promoting a proprietary alternative, Facebook Connect.

3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account

It's one thing to make data public or even mislead users about doing so; but where I really draw the line is that, once you decide you've had enough, it's pretty tricky to really delete your account. They make no promises about deleting your data and every application you've used may keep it as well. On top of that, account deletion is incredibly (and intentionally) confusing. When you go to your account settings, you're given an option to deactivate your account, which turns out not to be the same thing as deleting it. Deactivating means you can still be tagged in photos and be spammed by Facebook (you actually have to opt out of getting emails as part of the deactivation, an incredibly easy detail to overlook, since you think you're deleting your account). Finally, the moment you log back in, you're back like nothing ever happened! In fact, it's really not much different from not logging in for awhile. To actually delete your account, you have to find a link buried in the on-line help (by "buried" I mean it takes five clicks to get there). Or you can just click here. Basically, Facebook is trying to trick their users into allowing them to keep their data even after they've "deleted" their account.

4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted

Even if we weren't talking about ethical issues here, I can't trust Facebook's technical competence to make sure my data isn't hijacked. For example, their recent introduction of their "Like" button makes it rather easy for spammers to gain access to my feed and spam my social network. Or how about this gem for harvesting profile data? These are just the latest of a series of Keystone Kops mistakes, such as accidentally making users' profiles completely public, or the cross-site scripting hole that took them over two weeks to fix. They either don't care too much about your privacy or don't really have very good engineers, or perhaps both.

5. Even your private data is shared with applications

At this point, all your data is shared with applications that you install. Which means now you're not only trusting Facebook, but the application developers, too, many of whom are too small to worry much about keeping your data secure. And some of whom might be even more ethically challenged than Facebook. In practice, what this means is that all your data - all of it - must be effectively considered public, unless you simply never use any Facebook applications at all. Coupled with the OpenGraph API, you are no longer trusting Facebook, but the Facebook ecosystem.

6. Facebook is a bully

When Pete Warden demonstrated just how this bait-and-switch works (by crawling all the data that Facebook's privacy settings changes had inadvertently made public) they sued him. Keep in mind, this happened just before they announced the Open Graph API and stated that the "default is now social." So why sue an independent software developer and fledgling entrepreneur for making data publicly available when you're actually already planning to do that yourself? Their real agenda is pretty clear: they don't want their membership to know how much data is really available. It's one thing to talk to developers about how great all this sharing is going to be; quite another to actually see what that means in the form of files anyone can download and load into MatLab.

7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch

At the same time that they're telling developers how to access your data with new APIs, they are relatively quiet about explaining the implications of that to members. What this amounts to is a bait-and-switch. Facebook gets you to share information that you might not otherwise share, and then they make it publicly available. Since they are in the business of monetizing information about you for advertising purposes, this amounts to tricking their users into giving advertisers information about themselves. This is why Facebook is so much worse than Twitter in this regard: Twitter has made only the simplest (and thus, more credible) privacy claims and their customers know up front that all their tweets are public. It's also why the FTC is getting involved, and people are suing them (and winning).
Check out this excellent timeline from the EFF documenting the changes to Facebook's privacy policy.

8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy

Founder and CEO of Facebook, in defense of Facebook's privacy changes last January: "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." More recently, in introducing the Open Graph API: "... the default is now social." Essentially, this means Facebook not only wants to know everything about you, and own that data, but to make it available to everybody. Which would not, by itself, necessarily be unethical, except that ...

9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior

From the very beginning of Facebook's existence, there are questions about Zuckerberg's ethics. According to BusinessInsider.com, he used Facebook user data to guess email passwords and read personal email in order to discredit his rivals. These allegations, albeit unproven and somewhat dated, nonetheless raise troubling questions about the ethics of the CEO of the world's largest social network. They're particularly compelling given that Facebook chose to fork over $65M to settle a related lawsuit alleging that Zuckerberg had actually stolen the idea for Facebook.

10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided

Let's start with the basics. Facebook's Terms Of Service state that not only do they own your data (section 2.1), but if you don't keep it up to date and accurate (section 4.6), they can terminate your account (section 14). You could argue that the terms are just protecting Facebook's interests, and are not in practice enforced, but in the context of their other activities, this defense is pretty weak. As you'll see, there's no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. Essentially, they see their customers as unpaid employees for crowd-sourcing ad-targeting data.

Dirt, Voices Recharge Mobile Phones

Recently a dog chewed a girl’s mobile phone charger. The Sony Ericsson phone she own has an unconventional, uncommon connection that is now difficult to find in any store (thanks, Sony). Yes, she was able to order a new one online (actually, ordered two), but even with a rush shipment of one to three days (the fastest offered), she knew that her phone would die prematurely. she is still waiting for it, so don't try to call. It'll go right to voice.
How timely it was that she saw those two pieces of research announced that describe innovative ways to charge a mobile phone.

        Any one may face a similar problem like this but now there are many ways to  charge your mobile one of them is with the help of microbes. Let’s see how it was done
TOP 5: Places to Harvest Energy from Action
First, there's dirt. Aviva Presser Aiden of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has developed a phone charger that gets it power from microbes in soil. It turns out that soil microbes produce free electrons during the normal course of munching on and digesting soil. Her simple and inexpensive device has a conductive surface and a cathode that captures the electrons and shuttles them to battery. The device could be perfect for people living in areas not connected to an electrical grid, such as Sub Saharan Africa. Aiden recently won a $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to take the idea to its next level.
NEWS: Cell Phones Powered by Conversations
But why resort to dirt, when you could just blab and blab and blab and automatically charge your phone? A team in South Korea is working on way to harvest energy from the tiniest movements and vibrations generated by people breathing, walking or talking. The researchers propose using the zinc oxide fibers that expand and contract when they vibrate. The expanding and contracting generates a charge, which is captured and stored in a battery.

Gorgeous BLOCK tube amplifier to go into production

The Block tube amplifier is currently a working prototype, but designer Mateusz Glowka told Gizmag that production models will be ready by the end of June
Call me old fashioned if you will, but there's nothing more pleasing than the soft, natural and warm sound produced by a tube amplifier. The Block amplifier by industrial designer Mateusz Glówka is as much a visual treat as a sonic one. The somewhat harsh geometric lines are offset by the gratifying glow of the half dozen tubes on display outside the stainless steel and aluminum housing and, in a novel twist, the main sound board is attached with hinges so that it can be raised for dusting the electronics. The tube amplifier is a working prototype at the moment, but the designer told Gizmag that he expects production models to be available soon.

Glówka – a graduate of the Industrial Design Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Poland – told us that he has spent the last few months testing the tube amplifier with some speakers (also his creation) called SoundPunch, featuring a tube amp-friendly Fostex speaker and laminated, 17mm (0.66-inch) thick dimmed glass walls, the latter said to help keep unwanted vibrations to a minimum. The Block prototype was created along with electronics veteran Marian Kopecki, who has "35 years of experience in fields ranging from military microwaves through filtering network interference to electric vehicles."

Two E88CC tubes used for RIAA correction, two 6N6P tubes for the driver and two 6P3S-E tubes for the output stage are positioned on the top of, and outside, the upper housing and connect to the hinged main board within. Other components include TG MAN 67 SE and TS 180/121 output transformers and DS5/200 chokers, a 230V, 50Hz IEC 60320 C14 power input with 630maT slow blowing fuse power protection, a mechanical power switch to reduce stand-by consumption to zero, a 50 kohm ALPS volume control and contactron input selectors.
Internal components known to cause the most signal interference have been placed in closed compartments to isolate them from the audio's path. The 11.8 x 9.8 x 10-inch (300 x 250 x 255 mm) Block weighs just under 40 pounds (18 kg) and is said to take about a minute to warm up.

To the rear are four DC-coupled, 50 kohm RCA line inputs, a 47kohm, DC-coupled RCA input for a turntable and speaker outputs. Output power at 440Hz is reported to be 2 x 3.5W (with total harmonic distortion of one percent) and 2 x 5W (with five percent THD), the frequency response at 3W is 35Hz to 35kHz and the optimum speaker load is 8 ohms.
Glówka told us that the first limited production run will be ready for the end of June and that "the prices are not set yet, but I would think it should cost about a US$1000 per piece."

NASA awards US$269 million to stimulate privately operated spacecraft development

Artists image of the Dragon spacecraft in orbit (Image: SpaceX)
Once the last of NASA's space shuttle fleet shuffle off to retirement in a few months, the space agency will be totally dependent on the Russian Soyuz to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. At a cost of around US$63 million per seat, or more than $753 million a year, NASA is turning to the commercial companies to provide a more economical option. As part of the second round of funding for the agency's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) initiative that aims to stimulate development of privately operated crew vehicles to low Earth orbit, it will dole out grants totaling $269.3 million to four private companies. One of the recipients is SpaceX, which has been awarded $75 million to develop a launch escape system for its Dragon spacecraft.
Although the Dragon spacecraft was designed from the outset to carry seven astronauts into space and, with the successful flight on December 8th, 2010, the company has already proven the performance of many of the Dragon and Falcon 9 rocket components, a launch escape system that quickly separates the crew module from the rest of the rocket in the case of an emergency, is one of the technologies that needs to be realized before the craft can actually transport humans into low Earth orbit.
Unlike traditional solid rocket tractor escape towers that, due to their extreme weight, need to be jettisoned within minutes of liftoff, SpaceX's integrated escape system design builds the escape engines into the side walls of the Dragon spacecraft. Additionally, since the escape system is integrated into the spacecraft, it can be reused, to help reduce costs.
The company says that not only does such a design eliminate the danger of releasing a heavy rocket tower after launch, it also provides the crew with an emergency escape capability throughout the entire flight. This is an obvious advantage over the Space Shuttle, which has no escape system, and the Apollo moon program that allowed escape only during the first few minutes of flight.
The award involves funds being paid as SpaceX meets a series of specific hardware milestones that will see the company modify the Dragon to accommodate crew. These include:

• the static fire testing of the launch escape system engines
  
• intitial design of abort engine and crew accommodations
  
• prototype evaluations by NASA crew for seats, control panels and cabin

The other companies to be awarded funding are Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), Blue Origin, and Boeing. SNC's $80 million award will allow the company to further develop its Dream Chaser vertical-takeoff, horizontal landing (VTHL) lifting body spaceplane, while Boeing has been awarded more than $92 million, largely for itsCST-100 capsule. Although Blue Origin failed to meet all its milestones for the first funding round, the company has been awarded $22 million award for its pusher escape system.
The agreements between NASA and the four successful companies will run until May 2012.

Fiber-optic laser-based system brings rifle sights into the 21st century

A lab prototype of ORNL's Reticle Compensating Rifle Barrel Reference Sensor (Image: ORNL/Ron Walli)
At long ranges, snipers must compensate not only for crosswinds and the fact that bullets travel in a curved trajectory, but also allow for even very small barrel disruptions that can cause a shooter to miss their intended target by a wide margin. Contending with such difficulties makes feats such as the 1.53 mile (2.47 km) sniper kills by British Corporal Craig Harrison even more impressive, but a new type of rifle sighting system developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) could take one of these variables out of the equation. The fiber-optic laser-based sensor system precisely measures the deflection of the barrel relative to the sight and automatically adjusts the crosshairs to match the true position of the barrel.
The ORNL technology places glass optical fibers into the exterior grooves, known as flutes, found on the barrels of modern high-powered rifles. These reduce weight and create added surface area to enable the barrel to cool faster. Such flutes are either produced by the manufacturer or can be retrofit to existing barrels. A laser diode sends a signal beam into the optical fibers which split the beam twice, sending one light beam along the top of the rifle barrel and another along the side. This allows the system to measure both the vertical and horizontal barrel deflection.
Traditional reticles are normally manually adjusted by one-fourth minutes of angle, but through the use of a combination of algorithms, optics and additional sensor inputs, the ORNL's Reticle Compensating Rifle Barrel Reference Sensor can also take into account distance and other factors affecting bullet trajectory to automatically adjust the crosshairs by 1/1,000th of a minute in real time. According to the leader of the development team, Slobodan Rajic, this makes the ONRL system 250 times better than traditional reticles.
But the ONRL team isn't done yet. Rajic and his colleagues are also working on a laser-based bullet tracking system that will provide specific information about the bullet flight path to give shooters even better odds of hitting their target.
Source: ORNL

Laser igniters could spell the end for the humble spark plug

Spark plugs could soon be replaced be laser igniters
Internal combustion engines are likely to remain in widespread use for some time yet, but it's possible that we may be bidding adieu to that most iconic of engine parts, the spark plug. Researchers from Japan's National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) are creating laser igniters that could one day replace spark plugs in automobile engines. Not only would these lasers allow for better performance and fuel economy, but cars using them would also create less harmful emissions.
Located at the top of each engine cylinder, spark plugs send a high-voltage electrical spark across a gap between their two metal electrodes. That spark ignites the compressed air-fuel mixture in the cylinder, causing a controlled mini-explosion that pushes the piston down.
One byproduct of the process are toxic nitrogen oxides (NOx), which pollute the air causing smog and acid rain. Engines would produce less NOx if they burnt more air and less fuel, but they would require the plugs to produce higher-energy sparks in order to do so. While this is technically possible, the voltages involved would burn out the electrodes quite quickly. Laser igniters on the other hand, could ignite leaner mixtures without self-destructing because they don't have electrodes.
The NINS scientists also address another limitation of spark plugs – the fact that they only ignite the area of the air-fuel mixture closest to them (the top), with much of the heat of the explosion being absorbed by the metal cylinder walls before it can reach down to the piston. Lasers, by contrast, could focus their beams into the middle of the column, from which point the explosion would expand more symmetrically – and reportedly up to three times faster than one triggered by a spark plug.
Additionally, engine timing could be improved, as lasers can pulse within nanoseconds, while spark plugs require milliseconds.
In order to cause the desired combustion, a laser would have to be able to focus light to approximately 100 gigawatts per square centimeter with short pulses of more than 10 millijoules each. Previously, that sort of performance could only be achieved by large, inefficient, relatively unstable lasers. The Japanese researchers, however, have created a small, robust and efficient laser that can do the job. They did so by heating ceramic powders, fusing them into optically-transparent solids, then embedding them with metal ions in order to tune their properties.
Made from two bonded yttrium-aluminum-gallium segments, the laser igniter is just 9 millimeters wide and 11 millimeters long. It has two beams, which can produce a faster, more uniform explosion than one by igniting the air-fuel column in two locations at once – the team is even looking at producing a laser with three beams. While it cannot cause combustion with just one pulse, it can do so using several 800-picosecond-long pulses.
So far, the laser-ignition system hasn't been installed in an actual automobile. The scientists are reportedly in negotiations with a large spark plug manufacturer and with global auto components manufacturer DENSO Corporation.
In the meantime, drivers wishing an upgrade from their "old school" spark plugs might be interested in Pulse Plugs, which reportedly boost engine efficiency and performance by storing ignition energy, then discharging it in the form of intense plasma balls.
The NINS research will be presented next month at the Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics, in Baltimore.