henry (01/19/83)
A recent amazing development: Richard Fork and Charles Shank of Bell Labs have managed to generate laser pulses 30 femtoseconds long. That's a disk of photons maybe a centimeter or two across and 9 microns thick. They say the pulses could be made even shorter -- it's more a question of money than feasibility -- but they are rapidly approaching physical limits: 9 microns is only about 14 wavelengths.