In 2001, anthrax-laced letters addressed to two United States senators and believed to have been mailed from a box on the Princeton University campus resulted in five deaths and dozens of cases of inhalation infection, not to mention a second wave of nationwide hysteria in the wake of 9/11. Texas A&M University quantum physicist Marlan Scully led the joint Texas A&M-Princeton team that developed a technique to instantly detect anthrax spores in the mail using lasers. He is now applying those lessons to his current research, dubbed "ghost lasers in the sky" -- a laser system capable of detecting threats, from poisonous gas to pollutants, in the upper atmosphere without ever opening an envelope or even leaving the ground.
