5 ms·
My read is that this will be great for commercial applications (e.g. welding, lighting), but a weapon that doesn't work in a smokey/foggy environment is going t
by chris_va 9y ago
My read is that this will be great for commercial applications (e.g. welding, lighting), but a weapon that doesn't work in a smokey/foggy environment is going to be fairly easy to circumvent. Environments where something is being hit with a high power laser tend to end up being smokey/foggy.
That won't make it useless, but it will definitely reduce utility and adoption. 100kW really is not that much, unless you can focus it to a fairly small diameter, which just is not possible at long distances.
My personal favorite for a "ray gun", and far more difficult to make work, is the Laser-Induced Plasma Channel.
- cctt23 9y agoWhat we really need is an energetically advantageous way to produce high energy neutral particle beams. That would start to look more like the ray guns of science fiction than lasers ever will. It’s not just the weather either, when you hit a target that has a bit of appropriate ablative armor, you’ll be dealing with another source of bloom. LIPC tech is good too, and might be closer than you’d think. You can exploit the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses to create and modulate plasma, and then do neat things like send a bunch of volts down the channel.
- aaronblohowiak 9y agoLightning!
- jcims 9y agoOr just use the plasma directly - https://youtu.be/ML79u9zPZu4?t=2m47s https://youtu.be/ML79u9zPZu4?t=2m47s
- gnode 9y agoSomething like a Godiva device (pulsed nuclear reactor)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godiva_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godiva_device They have a risk of creating a small nuclear explosion though.
- mirimir 9y agoAlso, I get from Ian Banks' SF, mirrors are a defense. And indeed, blowback offense.
- nickparker 9y agoMirror shields in the Culture series use the 'field' magic that so much of the Culture's science relies on. Presumably a reflector field is both insanely reflective (99.999% or better, like dielectric mirrors) and resilient to the air the field's being projected in heating up massively from the small energy fraction which is absorbed. Your typical "glass with metal on it" mirror will fare very poorly against a high power laser. They're only ~90% reflective, and 10% of a high power beam is more than enough to turn your mirror into a 0% reflective smoldering black lump. Even if you build a mirror with very high reflecting factor in the wavelength of your enemy's weapon, all it takes is a smudge of dust or oil on the surface and the thing is toast.
- mirimir 9y agoTrue. But on the other hand, there are mirrors in the laser itself that don't end up as toast. And in some circumstances, I can imagine throwaway mirrors that would reflect back substantial power before destruction. More or less a variant on chaff.
- Pamar 9y agoIf memory serves Traveller (game) mentioned aereosols (like smoke grenades) to counter lasers.
- usrusr 9y ago"Sandcasters". And in some incarnations of the game the clouds they produced would even be actively manoeuvred through space by some absurdly improbable application of magnetic force, to make defense an active skill (vs mindlessly pumping "more energy to shields")
- cm2187 9y agoAlso isn't it trivial to reflect the laser back to its origin? And if the laser is powerful enough to take down a missile, I'd thought the reflection of the beam on smoke may be harmful to humans too.
- evgen 9y agoReflect it away perhaps, back to origin would require a lot of control or luck. The other thing to keep in mind is that a "reflective" surface is not a perfect reflector so some energy transfer will occur and if that transfer damages the reflective surface it leads to more energy transfer, etc.
- cm2187 9y agoIt will be hard to hit the gun itself but what about reflecting it to the ship carrying the gun?
- todd8 9y agoThe exterior of a potential target could be covered in corner reflectors[1]. Such a surface reflects most of the light directly back to its source. Corner reflecting is the reason vehicle reflectors appear so bright under illumination. I wonder how good such a counter measure would be? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector
- nine_k 9y agoReflecting the ray in the general direction of the laser, yes. Reflecting it so that it could do any damage, hardly. You'd have to have a high-precision reflector to keep the reflected beam narrow, especially at a long distance. The reflection will likely have an order of magnitude larger area, and thus lower power density. A ship firing the laser is likely much sturdier and more massive than a missile it tries to gun down with the laser beam.
- walshemj 9y agoI think this is more a point defence (aa) weapon you could imagine one mounted in a second turret on a MBT to counter missiles / rpg's It would also if equipped with image recognition help protect the tank against enemy infantry - might not be to popular with you own grunts though.
- some_random 9y ago>It would also if equipped with image recognition help protect the tank against enemy infantry - might not be to popular with you own grunts though. Eh, they're pretty used to it by now thanks to reactive explosive armor and similar active defense systems. Don't stand by tanks, bad idea.
- roywiggins 9y agoProbably okay for targetted drone assassinations though
- nugi 9y agoTinfoil hats, back in style.
- mattnewton 9y agoIs targeted drone warfare still a tinfoil hat topic? I read I don’t know how many articles about Bush and Obama expanding a targeted drone program and the public seems to have just kinda shrugged. Edit: dead comment below points out I might be missing a joke: tinfoil is for blocking the lasers. D’oh
- some_random 9y agoI think he's making a joke about deflecting lasers with tinfoil?
- mr_overalls 9y agoNo tinfoil necessary when it's a well-documented fact. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-drone-strikes-bombing-isis-pirates-no-rules-obama-deaths-a7423401.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-tru...
- thawkins 9y agoWould the laser not burn a passage through any particulates, yes it would intialy attenuate tbe beam, but would then burn through
- fhood 9y agoWouldn't that depend heavily on the reflectivity of the particles?
- mr_overalls 9y agoAlso depends on whether particles are being freshly generated by the target. An aircraft could "smoke" itself - i.e. emit a particulate cloud from a grid of pores in its skin - in response to being targeted or fired upon by directed energy weapons.