holography

Voting has closed on the Laser Smackdown poll, with 772 people recording their opinion on the most amazing of the many things that have been done with lasers in the fifty years since the invention of the first working laser (see the Laserfest web site for more on the history and applications of lasers). The candidates in the traditional suspense-building reverse order: Lunar laser ranging 22 votes Cat toy/ dog toy/ laser light show 41 votes Laser guide stars/ adaptive optics 46 votes Holography 47 votes Laser eye surgery 53 votes Optical storage media (CD/DVD/Blu-Ray) 60 votes Laser…
What's the application? Holograms are images of objects that appear three-dimensional-- if you move your head as you look at a hologram, you will see the usual parallax effects, unlike a normal photograph, which is fixed. So, if your hologram includes one object that is partly behind another object, you can see around the obstruction by moving a bit to the side, just as you would if the original objects were in front of you. What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How can we jazz up flat images and make them look more lifelike?" 2) "How can we make credit cards harder to copy?" How does it…