Lasers set to replace spark plugs in car engines bang pew pew,
blow, suck Spark plugs in petrol engines are set to be replaced
by laser ignition systems, following development of new
manufacturing techniques by Japanese boffins. The new research
is to be presented to the world at an optics conference in
Baltimore next month by Takunori Taira of Japan's National
Institutes of Natural Sciences and his colleagues. Taira and his
team have been working with spark-plug firms and Toyota
subsidiaries to address the problems facing ordinary petrol-
engine ignition. At the moment, as any automotive fule kno, the
fuel-air mixture in a petrol engine's cylinder is ignited by a
plug which generates a spark between its electrodes using high-
voltage electricity. The spark plug is the limiting factor on
how "lean" - how low in fuel - the mixture can be: in order to
ignite a leaner mixture the spark must be hotter, and past a
certain point this destroys the electrodes. But designers would
like to make leaner-running engines as