Who you Gonna Call..?

By Caitlin Jennings, Communications Coordinator, 中文无码 & the Public

We are often told not to believe what we see in the movies, but sometimes even the most imaginative movies, such as听Ghostbusters听or听Star Wars, have some basis in scientific truth.听Robert Gordon (Westinghouse Science Talent Search听1961)听and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago found this when they decided to cross two focused femtosecond laser beams.

鈥淲e saw to our astonishment, when the laser beams cross in air, one beam intersects the other, turns the corner, [and] goes shooting out the direction of the other laser beam just like in听Star Wars,鈥� Robert says. 鈥淲e called it the Ghostbuster Effect because that鈥檚 what happens in that movie; you are never supposed to cross the beams or when you cross the beams they unleash all kinds of horrible forces.鈥�

Robert says, despite the astonishing effect and Hollywood allusions brought about by his research, 鈥渢he explanation is rooted in very good science.鈥� Plasma is produced by the crossing of the lasers, which stimulates Raman scattering and causes the effect. Plasma is a state of matter, like solid, liquid, and gas. However, unlike those states, plasma has ionized particles and may be manipulated by magnetic fields to form structures, such as filaments.听听occurs when photons are scattered inelastically, so that the outgoing photons have a different frequency than the incident photons. This听from the donor beam to the acceptor beam, which looks similar to the famous scene in听Ghostbusters听where the team crosses their laser streams to fight off evil ghosts.

Robert says he became interested in research with light 鈥済oing all the way back to my days at Westinghouse [STS].鈥� He remembers reading about astronomy and the universe in popular science magazines as a teenager.听At that time, he was also interested in ophthalmology and worked at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. After High School and STS, Robert attended Harvard where he did some of his earliest molecular beam experiments with his mentor, former Society Board of Trustees Chair and Nobel Laureate Dudley Herschbach.

Robert has continued reading popular science magazines, such as听Science News, and often gets ideas from them. For example, when learning recently about the origins of the universe and polarized light, he thought鈥渨ell maybe when we are hitting our solid targets we鈥檙e making not a big bang, but a little bang, and maybe this little bang will also produce some polarized light coming out. But I never expected to see much of an effect.鈥� He says, 鈥淲e saw 100% of the light coming out being polarized. And that鈥檚 what got us into this whole business about the Ghostbuster Effect and things like that.鈥� Fifty years later, his original interest in ophthalmology has also come full circle as his research has applications for treating glaucoma.

鈥淵ou get your best ideas by looking outside … of the area you are working on,鈥� Robert says, which is why he encourages young, aspiring scientists to read a broad array of scientific subjects and explore subjects that excite them. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not an exaggeration to say that the things that excited me then have kept the fire burning all these years,鈥� Robert says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why I do the experiments I鈥檓 doing now, it鈥檚 stuff which I read about in听Science News-Letter听颅摆苍辞飞听Science News] back 50 years ago. I mean it’s听changed a lot, but the same kind of excitement is still there.鈥�

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