Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have developed extremely powerful microscopic lasers that are even smaller than the wavelength of the light they produce. So called ‘nanolasers’ have a huge variety of medical, surgical, industrial and military uses, covering everything from hair removal to laser printers and night-time surveillance. According to lead researcher Professor Yuri Kivshar, the nanolasers developed by his team promise to be even more powerful than existing lasers, allowing them to be useful in smaller-scale devices. “They can also be integrated on a chip,” he said.