There is the techno version of the future, filled with personal electronic implants, space travel and laser weapons.
Moscow is investing heavily in laser and space-oriented strategic defense activities.
So Stojkovic and Mureika have reasoned that the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a planned international gravitational observatory, should not detect any gravitational waves emanating from the lower-dimensional epochs of the early universe.
The US space agency satellite uses a laser altimeter to measure the elevation of the ice sheets.
Some women like laser guns, space ships, and light-saber sword fighting.
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That could happen about five years from now, perhaps using a laser on the International Space Station to transmit solar power collected by its panels to Earth.
We also take a closer look at how the commercial space sector is pushing exploration forward with Google Lunar X Prize senior director, Alexandra Hall, a lunar rover team at Carnegie Mellon, the Space Angels Network VC firm and Laser Motive, which is working on powering crafts through lasers.
"If you've watched James Bond films over the years, you know that anything with a harpoon, with a laser, with a net in space has the potential to grab another spacecraft and destroy it, " he told BBC News.
An alternative is Inertial confinement fusion (ICF), in which fusion of nuclei is initiated by heating and compressing a fuel target, typically in the form of a pellet containing deuterium and tritium contained in a device called a hohlraum (hollow space or cavity) using an extremely powerful laser.
Moviegoers are in for one final go-around of space-going swashbucklers slashing at each other with laser swords as they rocket from star to star.
Researchers at the Center for Laser Applications at the University of Tennessee Space Institute in Tullahoma have developed a technology that goes on a "seek and destroy" mission for cancerous tumors.
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The sensor, or an array of them, would record the movement of your hands while they type against a keyboard projected by laser on your desk, or even in the space in front of you.
The laser would only singe the surface of an object in space, but that tiny burn could still help point it downward, Dr. Campbell says.
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In 2011, researchers from China and Hong Kong showed how it might be done with laser beams of a specific shape - and the US space agency Nasa has even funded a study to examine how the technique might help with manipulating samples in space.
Cable-climbing robots, powered by laser beams shot upward from the ground, or downward from space, would take payloads to orbit.
The enigmatic "Mona Lisa" countenance was digitized and traveled via laser almost 240, 000 miles from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Although we're always keen on new military tech (hey, it gives us something to write about), we're gonna have to side with the Doubting Thomases on this one, because the impending "ROBO-ONE in the Space" satellite is simply too important to risk even a single stray laser strike.
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The Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration presents a significant upgrade in existing data communications used in space -- with an estimated increase of six times the throughput of the current best radio system.
The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Project (LCRD) will follow with launch in late 2017 on a commercial Space Systems Loral spacecraft.
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