this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2025
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Peacock feathers can be lasers (www.science.org)
submitted 4 days ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world
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“I always like to think that for many technological achievements that benefit humans,” Dawson says, “some organism somewhere has already developed it through some evolutionary process.”

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[–] MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The feathers actually work as photonic crystals with regularly spaced melanin rods that create a "cavity" where light bounces back and forth until it exits as coherent laser light - nature basically invented distributed feedback lasers millons of years before we did!