History 101 (2020) s02e07 Episode Script

1
October 2021.
A US garrison in Syria comes under attack
from an unpredictable, lethal adversary,
suicide drones.
Capable of flying up to 60 miles,
they come armed
with deadly nail bombs or worse.
For military and civilian targets
on land and sea,
the growing threat
of high-tech terrorism is real.
We have seen these kinds
of attacks in the past.
It was complex. It was deliberate.
But a new weapon
is coming to the rescue.
Capable of spotting, tracking,
and instantly destroying
even a swarm of these silent killers,
a device straight out of science fiction,
a weaponized laser.
But for most of us,
lasers are not a devastating weapon.
They're an indispensable part
of our everyday lives.
The 16-billion-US-dollar laser market
embraces everything from entertainment
to heavy industry,
medicine
to the Internet,
which only works as fast as it does
thanks to nearly four billion miles
of laser-powered high-speed optical fiber.
Enough to wrap
around the Earth 150,000 times.
Lasers are generally harmless,
making our lives better,
but laser weapons are becoming
ever more powerful.
The US Army is developing a laser
ten times stronger
than their anti-drone ray,
powerful enough to destroy a helicopter
or a cruise missile.
And globally,
the laser-weapons market
is worth about $4.37 billion,
a figure that's only growing
with every year.
Sure, laser tag with friends
is still a fun way to spend an afternoon,
but the latest laser technologies
have powers out
of a big-budget superhero movie.
How dangerous are they?
Will lasers soon become too hot to handle?
They're pulling us up.
In the 1940s and '50s,
before the laser is actually invented,
it already exists,
at least in fiction.
They set up an electronic screen!
Writers and artists
imagine ray guns so powerful
they can shoot beams of light
capable of vaporizing anything,
from a human being to a battleship.
They're gonna hit us!
They're gonna hit us!
In science fiction,
death rays are so common,
you'd think they were already a thing.
No!
But it isn't until 1957
that this fantastical idea
of a deadly beam of hot light
becomes more than a fantasy.
I like thinking of things.
I like inventing.
Columbia University researcher
Gordon Gould
is fascinated
by Einstein's radical quantum theory,
which explains
how light is made up of photons
that behave in a particular way.
Gould wants to take Einstein's idea
and create a new light source
of great purity
that will give humanity
a powerful, focused heat source
and potentially a new weapon.
Gould knows that when energy
is added to atoms,
they emit light or photons.
Like when a poker glows red-hot
in the fireplace.
His big idea is to capture those photons
in a mirror-lined container
so that they rebound,
triggering a chain reaction of photons
that can be focused
into a concentrated beam,
one that he hopes
could be capable of heating a target
to the temperature of the sun.
He gives his idea a name,
light amplification
by stimulated emission of radiation.
The concept of the laser is born.
But not the thing itself yet.
The race is on
to see who will be the first
to create a fully functioning,
commercially viable laser.
And guess who sees the potential?
The military.
You'll marvel
at the superior intelligence
that unleashes its deadly ray.
Steve! Steve!
In the late 1950s,
as the United States
is in the grips of a Cold War arms race
with the Soviet Union,
the Pentagon starts pouring millions
of dollars into laser research,
but no luck.
The actual winner of the laser race?
Eccentric film producer
and billionaire inventor Howard Hughes,
or at least a physicist
in his California lab.
In 1960,
with a budget of just $50,000,
Theodore Maiman comes up
with a simple design
based on the laser concept.
A pencil-shaped rod
of artificial ruby, surrounded by mirrors,
is energized by a type of photo flash.
The mirrors focus the flash onto the ruby,
and a beam of pure red light emerges
at the ends of the rod.
This is reflected back and forth
until it builds up
to the fantastic power source
known as the laser beam.
The laser has arrived,
and researchers quickly discover
that various materials
produce specific types of laser light
that are useful in different ways.
The original ruby laser
is surgically precise.
Literally.
It can destroy a blood vessel
without damaging surrounding tissue.
In 1961,
it's used to destroy a tumor
on the retina of a very brave patient,
the first laser medical procedure.
Later, it will prove the go-to laser
when you need to remove a tattoo.
The energized material
doesn't have to be a solid like a ruby.
Gas lasers are more powerful,
making them useful
for cutting steel plates
and welding metal.
Other semiconductor lasers
actually use an electrical current
to generate low-power beams
that are perfect
for, well, laser pointing.
The laser is proving
a handy thing to have,
but still, in the popular imagination,
there's an expectation that ultimately,
they'll prove to be an effective weapon.
We spotted a chap playing
with a combination of laser tubes
and a toy construction set.
The range of this rather cumbersome toy
is only five yards.
The truth is,
much to the dismay of the military,
real-world lasers just aren't
powerful enough to do much damage.
And they're too complicated
and expensive to build
for them to be useful outside
of specific industrial applications.
At least that's what everyone thought.
But lasers are about to have
a huge impact on people's daily lives
in the most ordinary way.
June 26th, 1974.
The first real-life laser guns
are not what anyone envisioned.
Instead of blasting aliens,
they're reading barcodes
at a supermarket checkout.
Barcode scanners
are based on low-power
semiconductor and gas laser designs
from the early '60s.
It may seem low-key,
but this cheap
and simple bit of laser tech
will spark a revolution in commerce.
In the marketplace, coded markings,
scanned and registered by the computer,
serve the consumer
with a fast, accurate record
of all purchases.
These low-powered lasers
will prove useful
at scanning more than just barcodes.
In 1978,
the LaserDisc player arrives.
CD players appear the following year.
They work more or less the same way.
Lasers read discs by measuring
minute changes in the distance
between the laser source
and tiny indentations
on the disc's surface.
Changes that are translated
into digital data,
ones and zeros.
The laser's accuracy
in measuring distances
makes it a useful tool
for surveyors and architects,
allowing measurements
from the size of a room
to much vaster distances.
So why do lasers
make such great measuring tools?
Laser beams travel at the speed of light.
So the time it takes
to reflect off a surface
can be used to find distance.
That's why, when Buzz Aldrin
and Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon
in 1969,
they not only left behind their footprints
but also installed
a two-foot-wide mirror array.
Scientists could then bounce laser beams
off the mirrors on the Moon
to keep track of how far away
from the Earth it is.
FYI,
it's getting almost 1.5 inches
further away every year.
Though born out of a desire
to create the ultimate weapon,
by the early 1980s,
lasers have become an everyday technology
at the heart of music,
movies, medicine,
even laser pointers and printers,
but the death ray
is about to make a comeback.
It's 1983,
and the Star Wars movies
are a global cultural phenomenon.
Ask any kid, and they'll tell you
what lasers are really for.
Lightsabers.
But real-life lasers might finally
be catching up with science fiction.
If you'll pardon my stealing a film line,
the Force is with us.
March 23rd, 1983.
President Ronald Reagan
announces a new approach
to deal with the Soviet nuclear threat.
He calls it
the Strategic Defense Initiative
or SDI.
I'm taking an important first step
to achieve our ultimate goal
of eliminating the threat
posed by strategic nuclear missiles.
At the heart
of Reagan's SDI program?
Lasers.
The idea is that a network of satellites
detects incoming Soviet missiles
then destroys them with space lasers
or by reflecting
a powerful laser beam from the ground.
The trouble is
the technology is a fantasy.
It doesn't exist yet.
But that doesn't stop the government
spending $250 million a month
to make it a reality.
In 1983,
work begins here
in the California wilderness.
This enormous accelerator
is at the frontier of the laser technology
always seen as a key element
in any defense against Soviet missiles.
Not everyone
is convinced it's a good idea.
Senator Edward Kennedy
can't resist referring to SDI
as a reckless Star Wars scheme.
But at the Pentagon, SDI officials
reject this narrow interpretation.
Despite the criticism,
SDI does achieve one of its key goals,
spooking the Soviets.
Soviet Premier Gorbachev
pleads with Reagan to abandon SDI.
It's future development
of exotic technology like this
which the Soviet Union
says must be limited
before they will agree to a treaty,
cutting the arsenals
of the big strategic weapons.
The truth is,
SDI is plagued by delays
and technical problems.
To shoot down missiles,
there must be
a phenomenal increase in power.
The hardware must be
a more manageable size.
It turns out
military lasers are still too unwieldy
and lacking in power
to work as weapons in the real world.
After serving its role
as a largely diplomatic prop
to win concessions,
the SDI program is quietly dismantled.
Meanwhile, on the domestic front,
by the 1990s,
lasers are common in our daily lives,
from serious science to laser-tag games.
And while the military hasn't been able
to turn them into death rays,
lasers are proving useful
for the targeting and aiming
of conventional weapons.
An aircraft
equipped with a laser illuminator
approaches the target
and directs the beam on it.
The bomb is then delivered.
It continually corrects its course
all the way down,
homing in on the target.
See space-shaking last battle
of Earth rockets versus flying saucers
Lasers hardly seem
the space-age invention of the future
they once were,
but a new use for lasers
is under development
that will go on
to define the future of humanity.
Back in the early 1960s,
scientists discovered
that data can be encoded in a laser
by making subtle changes
in the pulses of the beam,
but sending data-encoded laser beams
through the air proved problematic.
Atmospheric interference
would disrupt the beam,
like weak sunshine on a hazy day.
But, by the 2000s,
scientists have perfected a way
to send laser beams down a cable,
so the data gets through without a hitch.
It's the technology
that makes the modern Internet possible.
High-speed Internet
along laser-powered fibers
arrives in the 2000s.
In 2010,
Chattanooga, Tennessee,
becomes the first city in the US
to offer one-gigabit speeds,
allowing citizens to download
a movie in just 16 seconds.
It would have taken one hour
and 13 minutes before fiber.
Laser-powered fiber
will carry financial transactions,
better connect communities
across the world,
as well as serve
the ever-growing 24-7 global demand
for streaming video content.
By 2010, 1.25 billion miles
of laser-powered fiber-optic cables
span the globe,
enabling humanity
to communicate at light speed.
Without it,
our planet would be a very different,
less connected place.
But despite all the wholesome things
that owe their existence to lasers,
the search is still on
for a laser-powered death ray.
The Reagan-era
Star Wars missile-killer laser
may have fizzled out,
but the millions spent over the decades
on R & D for laser design and fiber optics
leads to a major breakthrough in 2014.
This is
your DOD News web update.
A while ago, we brought you a story
about how the Navy was going to experiment
with a laser system mounted on a ship.
Laser-weapons researchers
discover the crucial missing ingredient,
a technique called beam combining.
Let's break it down.
In the past,
creating a single powerful-enough laser
was the hurdle,
but laser-weapon researchers discover
that taking several smaller fiber lasers,
combining the beams,
and putting that through a system
of mirrors that act like a prism
creates a single devastating beam.
A process that looks like the cover
of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon
but in reverse.
November 2014.
The US Navy unveils
a 30-kilowatt prototype
of this new type of laser weapon.
The USS Ponce
was in the Persian Gulf
from September to November
testing out the Laser Weapon System
or LaWS.
Test targets are lined up
on the water and in the air.
First, radar locks on,
then the shipborne laser
unleashes instant destruction.
The trials went extremely well,
and it was able
to destroy multiple moving targets
on the water and in the air.
After decades
of shattered Star Wars dreams,
it looks like
weaponized lasers are now a reality.
So I guess war waged in the future
is gonna look like a Star Wars film?
Yeah, especially since
they wanna take this technology
and attach it to both ground-
and air-based platforms,
not to mention the cost-effectiveness
of the LaWS at less than a dollar a shot.
And may the Force be with you.
As of 2022,
nine laser-equipped US Navy vessels
are nearing deployment,
and the plan is to use lasers
in aerial combat as well.
Lasers like these
could change how war works.
As if that isn't enough,
lasers are revealing
an even more jaw-dropping ability.
Meet one of the most powerful X-ray lasers
on Earth,
the Linac Coherent Light Source.
Our facility is an X-ray laser,
which in some ways is very similar
to the lasers we're all familiar with.
You know, the red laser pointers
that we use around the home.
But the wavelength is not
in the visible part of the spectrum
but all the way down
into the X-ray part of the spectrum.
The X-ray laser beam
is generated by accelerating electrons
along nearly one mile of tubing,
energizing them with high-powered magnets
until they begin emitting X-rays,
which are then focused into a beam
that can be 100 times as powerful
as the sunlight that hits the Earth,
focused onto a spot
the size of a thumbnail,
enabling scientists to create images
and movies of chemical reactions
for the first time in human history.
So we can image
individual atoms and molecules,
studying chemistry and biology,
and watch how they evolve in time.
You can build up
the most amazing precision movie
of how the natural world works.
The X-ray laser
is awesomely powerful.
In 2017,
during an experimental test,
researchers are shocked
when the laser instantly strips
an atom of its electrons,
leaving a void that sucks in electrons
from the surrounding molecules,
like a microscopic black hole.
Laser-powered black holes might sound
like a disaster movie waiting to happen,
but the Linac Coherent Light Source
is being upgraded
to be 10,000 times brighter
and a whole lot faster,
from 120 X-ray pulses per second
to one million.
A whole new world
will open up for us.
Now this will become the go-to tool
for the 21st century.
Looking at how the world works
at the level of atoms and molecules,
we can look at how the cells
in our body fight disease.
It means we can bring the stars
and the planets here on Earth
and look at how they work in detail.
Laser technology is
on the cusp of a new era,
where it can reveal the foundations
of the physical world,
but it can also unleash
colossal destruction on Earth
and in space.
From anti-satellite weapons
and airborne lasers
to highly threatening on-orbit activities,
space is a war-fighting domain
just like the land, air, and sea.
After decades, as an invention
that appeared to be an underperformer
and, let's face it, a bit humdrum,
lasers are now revealing
their remarkable powers
and potential for the future of mankind.
But as any superhero knows,
with great power
comes great responsibility.