At dawn, he could see that but for the roadside oaks everything was gone, burned off the face of the earth as if by a powerful beam of light, the house standing naked and singed in a field of white ash.

NEWYORKER: Idols

Given the risks of aiming such a powerful beam of high-intensity radiation at an Earth ground station, as well as the cost of building billions of dollars in infrastructure to collect the energy in space, the efficiencies you can get from terrestrial solar power seem a safer bet--at least for now.

FORBES: Galactic Gold Mine?

That happens because, provided those electrons that have given off light are quickly pumped back to their excited states, the light bouncing around between the mirrors will stimulate the production of yet more light and a powerful, coherent beam will emerge.

ECONOMIST: Optoelectronics