Using a variety of astronomy techniques and military-grade tech, researchers in China say they’ve built a laser-based system that can read letters three millimeters tall from nearly a mile away.
This extremely high-def technology was born from something called intensity interferometry, an imaging method first used in the 1950s to measure the size of distant stars. Back then, it involved collecting light from celestial bodies and using interference patterns to piece together details we couldn’t otherwise see.
The Chinese research team essentially took that concept, attached some infrared lasers, and turned it toward the Earth instead of the stars.
Scientists Built a Laser That Can Read Text From Almost a Mile Away
Here’s how it works without the jargon: they fire eight laser beams at an object, watch how the light bounces back, and use all that scrambled signal noise to reconstruct a readable image so clear, so legible, that you’ll be able to help someone figure out a crossword puzzle from 0.85 miles away.
Instead of relying on the natural light of distant stars, they beamed their own laser light onto objects, split it eight ways, and got sharper results. One beam by itself is a blurry mess. But at beams? Suddenly, you can read a text from so far away you might not even be in the same ZIP Code anymore.
The researchers say it could be used to identify space debris, turning rogue hunks of orbiting junk into clearly defined, classifiable objects. They’re also looking to throw AI into the mix to improve shape recognition, because if you’ve developed a technology that can detect things from almost a mile away, you might as well make it be able to identify stuff on its own, too.
Can and/or will it be used to spy on humans? Maybe! I hate to be so cynical about these kinds of things, but nowadays it feels like it’s only a matter of time before incredible technological breakthroughs like this are turned on us instead of the stars.
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