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Why can't we just vaporise stone with lasers..
by tiku 7y ago
Why can't we just vaporise stone with lasers..
- Animats 7y agoIt's been proposed. By Disney. 1958. [1] https://youtu.be/TwA7c_rNbJE?t=137 https://youtu.be/TwA7c_rNbJE?t=137
- dr_dshiv 7y agoMy favourite video of all time.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThe success rate of those predictions is ... low. At 60+ years, only a couple are commonplace or in effect, mostly the inducement of sprawl. Virtually all the rest assume vast amounts of free power which never materialised. The automation examples are only now, and with great difficulty and challenges, appearing. Litho-annealing / vitrification remains a fantasy. Lasers serve as alignment aids, not boring mecganisms. Any idea who commissioned/ contributed to this?
- wongarsu 7y agoThe boiling point of limestone is around 825°C or 1515°F. Heating up a tube of multiple meters diameter and multiple kilometer length to that temperature would require insane amounts of energy. A laser makes it possible to efficiently heat a small spot to that temperature which helps reduce waste heat, but you still have to heat every spot at some point.
- polemic 7y agoI wonder what you do with a jet of vapourized rock too, once you've got it to that temperature!
- lstodd 7y agoWell I guess one can suck the plasma into a condenser unit and then on to a conveyor belt for extraction. Now what you do when those lasers hit a high-water-content sediment and cause a vapor explosion, loss of integrity of surrounding rock and flooding?
- edoo 7y agoVery high power lasers fire for a fraction of a second. If there is enough energy it should vaporize a spot and cause a massive shock wave that could also take out the surrounding rock. It could be more of a laser hammer.