With Marvel’s Infinity War currently blowing up at the Box Office, now is as good of a time as any to ask if you could have any superpower, what would it be?!? If you answered having the ability to shoot lasers out of your eyes, you’re in luck. That’s now a real thing.
According to Engadget, “It will still be a while before scientists are able to harness Superman-like laser vision, but the technology is now closer than ever before thanks to a new development from the University of St Andrews. The team there have created an ultra-thin membrane laser using organic semiconductors, which is for the first time compatible with the requirements for safe operation in the human eye. Even though the membrane is super thin and flexible, it’s durable, and will retain its optical properties even after several months spent attached to another object, such as a bank note or, more excitingly, a contact lens. The ocular laser, which has so far been tested on cow eyes, is able to identify sharp lines on a flat background — the ones and zeros of a digital barcode — and could be harnessed for new applications in security, biophotonics and photomedicine.”
What kind of applications are we talking about exactly? I’m not sure. Perhaps we could unlock a door just by looking at it or maybe a blind person could use this technology to scan objects in order to learn about them. Either way it would seem like we would need to have an interface in place that could process what the lasers in our eyes are scanning. Making it ideal technology to pair with a neural implant that would let us connect directly to the Internet through our minds.
Such a pairing would be decades away though. For now it’s just cool to say that we can shoot lasers out of our eyes.
Is having the ability to shoot lasers out of our eyes the Greatest Idea Ever?
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