4 ms·
Remember to keep control of the death-ray in the hands of people who will not point it at their enemies. Or their friends. Or threaten to do so.
by dsr_ 3y ago
Remember to keep control of the death-ray in the hands of people who will not point it at their enemies.
Or their friends.
Or threaten to do so.
- bagels 3y agoThankfully if it's aimed at space, it's limited to shooting down planes and frying satellites.
- yetihehe 3y ago100GW? More like vaporising planes and satellites. 100GW will heat about 50T of aluminum to boiling temperature in about 1s. Of course you won't have perfect heat transfer, but if you can send that power for more than 5s, most satellites will start actually boiling and vaporising.
- ericbarrett 3y agoCould you even operate this laser terrestrially? The article says optical frequencies (visible light). I think the backscatter from atmospheric dust alone would blind anybody who glanced at it, and it would be visible for miles around.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jandrese 3y agoIt's not one laser, it's 100,000,000 single kW lasers spread across the surface of the Earth. A single kW laser is already very dangerous and stuff like reflecting off of a passing airplane will be a problem, but they'll be everywhere so you can't hide. That's probably unfair. I assume they'll be spread across deserts and other places with low population density.
- ericbarrett 3y agoMissed that, thanks. I thought maybe attenuation in the atmosphere would be a problematic amount of heat, but it turns out the Earth gets roughly 200,000 TW of solar irradiance so 100 GW would have a negligible (immediate) effect even if fully absorbed.
- bagels 3y agoI didn't do the math, but on an array this big, the 'near field' might be outside of the atmosphere anyways.
- jdkee 3y agoYou could build it on the moon.
- sleepybrett 3y agobecause you can't turn it 90 degrees?
- pajko 3y agoImagine when the beam goes off-angle, misses the sail and hits some extraterrestrial population lightyears away. Star Wars in real life.
- gus_leonel 3y agohttps://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0004-637X/825/2/101 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0004-637X/825/2/1...
- postmodest 3y agoIf we don't use this against the MCRN, they will use it against us.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoFusion drive torches are bad enough, but the Alcubierre drive "bow wave" is how you sterilise the entire planet face.