William Happer

That's fascinating.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, then this was declassified thanks to the effort of a Livermore friend and colleague, Claire Max, a woman physicist astronomer.

But she finally persuaded the Department of Institute

Declassified it.

So if you go to any big telescope now around the world, it has one of these sodium lasers you're pointing up at the sky at night.

You'll see this bright yellow beam going up.

Oh, wow.

Look at that right there.

Oh, there it is, yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, and so the point where they're coming, this is actually green light.

And so for the sodium, most of them are yellow for sodium, but that's the basic idea.

Well, I couldn't discuss it.

It was highly classified, so I couldn't even mention it until about 1995, I think, 1994 or 1995 when it was declassified.

But I'd invented it 12 years earlier.

You couldn't discuss working for defense of the country.

That was somehow immoral, defending the country.

I wasn't trying to attack Russia.

I was trying to defend ourselves.

They're hard to defend against, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.