Is laser light unnatural?

No. In 1995, a team of scientists on an airborne observatory discovered lasers operating near the central part of the hot star MWC 349.

The laser is created as intense ultraviolet light from the star “pumps” or excites the densely packed hydrogen atoms in the gaseous, dusty disk surrounding the star. Then, when the infrared light shines on the excited hydrogen atoms, it causes the atoms to emit an intense beam of light at exactly the same wavelength, creating the circumstellar laser, according to Sean W. J. Colgan of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, Mountain View, CA, a co-investigator in the discovery.

LASER stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
Basically we humans put some light on a racetrack and keep it going round and round while we shoot it with radiation and piss it the fuck off, then we release it onto an unsuspecting crowd.

I don’t know how the process of MWC349 relates to this but with that much mass you probably wouldn’t need the loop.

I wasn’t aware of the fascinating discovery described by @wundayatta. Prior to the invention of the laser in the 1960s, however, laser light was never seen in nature on planet Earth. Even very intense light sources (the Sun, lightning, atomic bombs, etc.) do not produce perfectly coherent (in-phase) and monochromatic (single wavelength) beams of photons such as produced by a laser.

Maybe the scientists looking at MWC 349 were seeing a laser battle. ;-)

Even if an example has been found in nature, it is not natural. Natural light (humans) is made up of many frequencies. Laser light is a single coherent light, therefore one not normally found in nature.

On Earth in everyday life yes they are!

It’s a completely natural effect, just an outcome of the laws of physics that run the Universe. As @wundayatta pointed out the Universe didn’t need humans to set up the effect. We just finally figured out the laws of how they work, and started harnessing them. But that doesn’t render the effect unnatural.

Absolutely NOT. Physics is the most natural science. Humans, and even the chemist, can only observe phsyics.

@ETpro Wow! That’s a very interesting philosophical point. Everything that humans do that we might call “unnatural” also takes advantage of natural effects. We use the laws of physics/chemistry/biology that operate in this universe.

I have often thought that everything is natural. The works of humans are natural because humans are natural. It is natural for us to make stuff. To wield tools.

I think people should rethink the language they use to be more specific about what they are looking for. For example: can lasers occur in the universe without human intervention? I’m sure even this can be torn down. What is intervention, for example?

If human activity, including technology, is to be considered natural rather than artificial, then all such questions are reduced to triviality. Shouldn’t we agree that “natural” implies “occurring in nature without human intervention”?

I think that sounds reasonable on the face of it. Although it is tautological, since we also have to define “nature.” It just always gets sticky, I think, at least for people like me. However it was interesting to discover the non-human generated laser.

@wundayatta & @gasman As you pointed out, perfectly natural LASER emissions from high energy areas of the Infrared Star “MWC 349”.http://laserstars.org/news/MWC349.html. So we don’t need to stretch the definition to any application of the laws of physics to call LASER emission natural. But I’d agree the ones we light our Christmas Trees with are artificial.