70i *Solid State Physics

beam and purity. Thus the laser principle is the greatest practical
physical discovery of recent years. It is far more than a device. The
change from incoherent to coherent emission of light is scientifically
equivalent to that from a liquid to a crystal, or, in human historic
terms, that from an irregular horde of warriors to disciplined soldiers
advancing in rank and file.
More recently still it has been found that the laser principle and the
transistor principle can be merged together and a simple electric current
can be made to generate light at a p-n junction and this light, by a
suitable adaptation of the size of the crystal can be made to lase, that
is, to send out enormously intense beams in a specific direction. It is
clear that the laser principle is only the beginning of an enormous and
wide-ranging development of high-precision physics, absolutely essential
for the proper control systems in space and hence, in this military
world, not likely to lack money to develop it. The laser is indeed already
the death ray, dreamed of by science fiction writers fifty years ago, as
by Wells in The War of the Worlds, but, fortunately, now it is likely to
find a more defensive role as an anti-nuclear rocket device.
Analogous in many ways to the laser effect, but produced by spon­
taneous radioactive changes, is the Mossbauer effect, for which the
discoverer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1961. Here, a particular
isotope of iron Fe-57 was found to emit gamma rays in extraordinarily
long wave trains, thus with extraordinarily accurate frequency. If the
atoms were in fixed positions, such as they are in a crystal of iron, these
trains were emitted coherently, providing an extremely fine standard of
frequency, a hundred times better than any known before. They were
capable, therefore, of measuring very small movements and even of
verifying Einstein’s theory in a terrestrial laboratory (pp. 742 ff.).
It is already evident that the solid state contains enormous possibili­
ties for the reinforcement and refinement of the existing phenomena of
physics and further that we have only really begun to touch its possi­
bilities. So far the remarkable effects of peculiar substances such as the
lodestone, the first magnet, have been discovered in the first place
largely by accident. It is evident that much more effective results could
be obtained by a systematic search guided by theory. We may expect in
this sense to see the bounds of physics enormously expanded with
corresponding applications in all the other sciences.