Lasers first emerged nearly 60 years ago, but the idea of using powerful beams of heat or light is hardly new. In the third century bc, for instance, Greek scientist Archimedes allegedly used mirrors reflecting the Sun’s rays to attack Roman ships off Sicily. Millennia later, ‘death rays’ — concentrated light or electricity — became a science-fiction trope, from H. G. Wells’s 1898 The War of the Worlds to the Star Wars franchise...
Language: en
LA - en SN - 0028-0836 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00024-0 ID - ref1 ER -