The Black Vault - Doctors capture sunbeams

Doctors in Israel have captured sunbeams and used them in place of lasers to perform surgery, it has been revealed.

Tests on living animals showed that the "sunlight scalpel" was as effective as a laser.

In future it could theoretically be used as a cheap method of removing unwanted tissue such as tumours - but only in sunny climates.

Researchers described how they used a prototype "solar concentrator" to operate with sunshine.

The technique was used to destroy a section of liver tissue in anaesthetised rats.

Sunlight was transported into the operating theatre from outside through a system of optical fibres. Concentrated rays were shone onto the exposed livers in bursts ranging from 40 seconds to three minutes.

The power of the light, measuring several watts per square millimetre, was similar to that of surgical lasers.

Tissue in the target area was seen to wither and die in the same way as it would after laser treatment.

The scientists, led by Jeffrey Gordon from Ben-Gurion University, Sede Boqer, Israel, wrote in the journal

Nature: "Even though the deployment of solar radiation for surgery must be restricted to clear-sky periods in sun-belt climates, its appeal lies in its potentially low cost compared with conventional laser fibre-optic treatments.

"Fibre-optic solar surgery can be used effectively to kill tissue in live animals, with highly concentrated sunlight producing the same rapid, localised and extensive damage that is achieved in laser surgery."

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