4 ms·
Its also ridiculously easy to blind someone with a laser. You can buy a cheap, absurdly powerful, chineese laser pointer and blind someone by accident in less t
by tryptophan 5y ago
Its also ridiculously easy to blind someone with a laser. You can buy a cheap, absurdly powerful, chineese laser pointer and blind someone by accident in less than a second.
- mometsi 5y agoIt's also ridiculously difficult to blind someone with a laser from far away. Assuming a ~$200 fan-cooled 5w engraving laser with an excellent collimating lens focused at infinity, 1mrad divergence, the irradiance would fall off within 500m to a level below any permanent harm (let alone permanent damage in less than a second). This is by the FAA's very conservative standard of 2.5mW/cm^2, which is about 1/50th of the irradiance of direct sunlight. Within 500m, you'd need to be able to aim the beam very precisely to maintain the narrow cone of light to within 1mrad of the victim's pupil. Your hands are too shaky, you'd need something like a motorized telescope mount with active tracking. The risks pilots bear when assholes shine bright lights at their windshield are distraction, glare and temporary 'flashblindness', where your rods and cones lose their low-light adaptation as they adjust to the briefly intense brightness level, and gradually recover over 10s of seconds. These are real risks, but it's not 30km lightsaber beams frying pilots' retinas for $3.99.
- ewokone 5y agoThanks and excellently written!