General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
Latest editorial
A laser focus
Rox Middleton, Liam Shaw and Miriam Gauntlett look at the history of lasers, from cat toys to modelling the explosion of stars
A rainbow lights up the Edinburgh skyline during the Scottish premiere of Global Rainbow a laser art installation by Yvette Mattern, part of Burns and Beyond, Edinburgh's flagship Burns festival. Picture date: Wednesday March 24, 2021
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
WHAT if you could capture light in a box? Lasers work on that very principle. Light is a wave and any colour is described by a particular wavelength. To trap light in a box, mirrors are used, with the dimensions specially chosen so that the light can reflect off the mirrors and “resonate” at its own wavelength.
Just like a musical instrument, these resonant waves reinforce each other. For a musical instrument, these reinforced waves come out as a sound wave making a note at a particular frequency, which is related to the wavelength.
In the case of a laser, light is trapped at a high intensity, again at a singular frequency related to the wavelength of the light. Some of the light is allowed to burst out of the container, seen as a laser beam.
More from this author
A small Japanese trial has reported some positive results for stem cell therapy to treat spinal-cord injuries
Man-made canals like Panama and Suez face unprecedented challenges from extreme weather patterns and geopolitical tensions that reveal the fragility of our global trade networks, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
It’s sunny times for the solar industry which is expected to continue to grow rapidly — but there are still major environmental issues with how solar cells are made, explain ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Fraud in Alzheimer’s research raises difficult questions about the current state of science, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
