Around 1.5 years ago, we got wind of researchers in the UK working up a battery-free pacemaker . Fast forward to now, and we've got yet another breakthrough in the field. Purportedly, a crew of Osaka University scientists have created the "world's first optical pacemaker," and in an article published in Optics Express, the team details how "powerful, but very short, laser pulses can help control the beating of heart muscle cells." In theory, this discovery provides the means for dictating said cells within a controlled setting, which could help researchers "better understand the mechanism of heart muscle contraction." As amazing as we're sure this is to the science world, throwing "lasers" and "heart" into the same sentence just doesn't elicit warm / fuzzy feelings.[Via Primidi