Laser From Sunshine

I was watching the news earlier and heard of the new solar scalpel, apparently there is a solar collector about the size of a dinner plate, that collects the suns rays, acting like a magnifying glass when the sun shines through, burning. anyways this solar collector amplifies the rays and then sends them down into a fibre optic cable which leads to the hospital, therefore being used in the operating theatre.
however, this only works where there is lots of sunlight, so places like africa and india would benifit greatly, no good for the uk then!. also its much cheaper, the price of a laser scalpel is apparently �70,000 but the solar scalpel is only �700! great or what?.

Could you supply a link please.

Thanks,JB1

OK here is one.

news.bbc.co.uk...

The procedure, explained in the journal Nature, would only work in sunny climates, but could one day provide a low cost alternative to conventional laser treatments.

Laser surgery is used often to remove tumours by simply burning them out, instead of traditional techniques of physically cutting them out of the body with a scalpel.

I dont konw if anyone of you have heard of this, you probably have, but anyway.

Isreali researchers have captured sunbeams and used them just like surgical lasers. Tests on animals have shown that the 'sunlight scalpel' was as effective as a proper laser. It is formed in the same way as a magnifying glass on a sunny day and transporting the sunbeam through optical fibres into a theatre.
It is costing less to use this technique and could very well be the future of removing tumours

Regards
Jonathan

Cool!

Shame it wouldn't work in scotland though!

Nah..seriously i read about this last month..the only problem is that Lasers take a tremendious amount of energy to work and even if they got this out into human trials...wouldn't they need to store the solar cells for upto 3 days to charge????

Might just be me babbling again!

when I was a child, used a magnifying glass and some bugs. Works pretty well concidering I needed the mag glass to see the hole I made! I imagine it is very painful so some form of pain killer wil be needed.

Oh YUCK!

Eww!

Advisor...the bugs came back to haunt you when u got toasted!

As for painkillers...i'd hope so!

So your saying that although it may cost less, it will not be as efficient?

Maybe it could be used for planned cases, and the "normal" laser for immediate cases
Anyway, thanks for the input

Jonathan