While the driving lights are the first use of a laser beam reflected off a mirror, the daytime running lamps, with their characteristic "torch" effect, and the indicator lights use LEDs.

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This conical beam is then reflected into a cluster of 1m or so rubidium atoms, which are held trapped in a magnetic field within a vacuum chamber.

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When the reflected object beam and the reference beam are recombined, they create an interference pattern that encodes the 3-D image.

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Holograms are interference patterns generated by the interaction of a blank reference laser beam with a second beam that has been reflected from an object of interest.

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And in the image of Moscow-Sheremetyevo airport, the flat concrete surfaces of the runways appear as black lines because the radar beam has been very efficiently reflected away from the satellite.

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It works by scanning a laser beam across an object and manipulating the reflected light to produce an extremely narrow focal plane.

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