Phasers Set To Kill

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A Petaluma startup called Raydiance Inc. has developed a laser that "looks like an ordinary slide projector," yet can emit "burst of photons so intense that it can vaporize matter without creating heat."

CEO Barry Schuler, who founded Raydiance, says it could be used for any number of purposes, such as removing tattoos without burning the skin or killing cancer cells without affecting healthy ones.

"This company has been in stealth mode for three years,” said Schuler, who briefly ran AOL after its merger with Time-Warner. "This technology is so new, so out there and bold, that we didn’t know if it would work."

"We can manipulate matter," said Schuler, who has raised about $25 million. Raydiance employs about 30 people and plans to roughly double that number within a year.

The duration of the light pulse is extraordinarily short. In scientific terms, the pulse lasts for mere "femtoseconds" — each femtosecond being a billionth of a millionth of a second. [did you know that there was such a thing as a femtosecond?]

How it works: the atomic targets are hit with a swarm of photons that materialize out of nowhere, knocking its electrons out of orbit and causing what scientists call a Coulomb explosion. In plain English, the material seems to vaporize.

Now if we could just get a transporter!