Ladies and gentlemen: I just spent a week vaporizing rocks with a laser! Now, after your first thought of “Whoa, awesome” wears off, you may be wondering why I would do such a thing. Because it’s fun, obviously. But also because the Mars Science Laboratory rover “Curiosity” will be doing the same thing on Mars. The ChemCam instrument uses an infrared laser to shoot pulses of light at rocks. The … Continue reading Fun with Lasers