4 ms·

>And if you want the most destructive power, those are all military lasers. Which can absolutely destroy things science fiction style, but on a fairly small sca

by rl3 1y ago

>And if you want the most destructive power, those are all military lasers. Which can absolutely destroy things science fiction style, but on a fairly small scale and with some important limitations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur Once upon a time we tried developing a nuclear-pumped X-ray laser for use in strategic defense, which if my napkin math is correct was probably in the neighborhood of NIF in terms of energy output (despite the conversion efficiency being terrible). Notable is that NIF continues existing after it fires.

doctorwho42 1y ago
Also NIF is actually 192 laser beams with about 3 football fields of lab grade warehouse to house all those laser beams optics for beam pumping, shaping, etc. Not sure you can move NIF like you would move excalibur
- dmurray 1y ago
  Finally, a use for aircraft carriers.
jpmattia 1y ago
Back in graduate school, I TA'd an electrostatics course. We were going through the details of the basic parallel-plate capacitor, and so Prof. Peter Hagelstein (of the project you listed above) used the example of how much energy was stored in a football-field sized set of parallel-plate capacitors with oil as a high-breakdown dielectric. The students were dutifully copying the lecture while I was sitting there with my mouth agape realizing that he was working through a simplified example of what energy storage was required for the X-ray laser. IIRC Those guys had their own substation, and would charge the capacitors. The switch would get thrown and the sublasers would shoot at the molybdenum target, which would laze in the X-ray spectrum (and the molybdenum would vaporize, I think.) Afterwards, I asked him how on earth the energy was transferred from the caps to the sublasers: He just smiled and said "very carefully".
- rl3 1y ago
  Thanks for this. Not only is it a great anecdote, but it's nice to be reminded that it's still a small world out there.

by rl3 1y ago

doctorwho42 1y ago

Also NIF is actually 192 laser beams with about 3 football fields of lab grade warehouse to house all those laser beams optics for beam pumping, shaping, etc. Not sure you can move NIF like you would move excalibur

dmurray 1y ago
Finally, a use for aircraft carriers.

jpmattia 1y ago

Back in graduate school, I TA'd an electrostatics course. We were going through the details of the basic parallel-plate capacitor, and so Prof. Peter Hagelstein (of the project you listed above) used the example of how much energy was stored in a football-field sized set of parallel-plate capacitors with oil as a high-breakdown dielectric. The students were dutifully copying the lecture while I was sitting there with my mouth agape realizing that he was working through a simplified example of what energy storage was required for the X-ray laser. IIRC Those guys had their own substation, and would charge the capacitors. The switch would get thrown and the sublasers would shoot at the molybdenum target, which would laze in the X-ray spectrum (and the molybdenum would vaporize, I think.) Afterwards, I asked him how on earth the energy was transferred from the caps to the sublasers: He just smiled and said "very carefully".

rl3 1y ago
Thanks for this. Not only is it a great anecdote, but it's nice to be reminded that it's still a small world out there.