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Real weapons-grade lasers on the horizon

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vedrit:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090530/ts_alt_afp/usitresearchmilitarylaser_20090530082418

I just saw this on Yahoo, and being the geek I am, had to look into it.

this is what I had to say:

Oh. My. FRICKEN. Heck.

Destructavator:
Yeah, I saw that today too.  I was actually going to mention it in a post myself, but you beat me to it.   ;)

...Burns hot as a star, but the device is as big as a house (for now).

It's just like a company that is trying to eventually build a real, actual light-saber (like in Star Wars) that can really cut things as depicted in the movies.  It's actually plasma - not a laser - in that contraption though, and right now it is as big as a house as well - long ways to go before it fits in a portable handle.

ChunLing:
Now all you have to do is to lure the aliens into the center of a giant array of lasers.  Heck, you won't even need the DT pellet, aliens got radioactive blood or something, right?  Or is that just Spiderman?

They need to be more precise about terminology, I think.  The goal isn't to produce more energy than went in, but to recover more usable energy than you put in.  The NIF is actually not the best set-up for that.  Because it's pulsed at high energy rather than steady state, the heat energy ends up being difficult to collect and concentrate so as to run a turbine or whatever.  But whatever, if you can get return energy out of DD/DT fusion, efficiency isn't that big a deal.

I'm actually kinda surprised, though.  I thought they had this thing running years ago.

Those plasma cutters aren't as big as my house, and I don't live in a mansion (not a hut, either, but it's not a big house).  Or are you talking about something else?

vedrit:
To my understanding, this thing isnt using plasma. It may turn things INTO plasma, but, what was it, 137 laser beams, focused into 1?
Perhaps, in game, it could be a base defense. Powers the base AND shoots down UFOs.

And light-sabers are, as far as our understanding of physics goes, impossible. Light in that intensity doesnt simply stop, neither does plasma, not without there being something there to stop it.

As for size, that can be fixed by researching different stages of miniturization, or something. Who knows? Maybe not hand-held NIFs, but maybe ship-mounted

Destructavator:
Sorry, I was talking about two different things, one after the other, and didn't make that clear - First I was commenting on the laser, then I mentioned and compared the laser to a different subject, a real company that has a giant house-sized machine that generates a steady (not a pulse) plasma blade the length and approximate size of a light-saber blade as depicted in the Star Wars movies.  My final comment was that the second device - not the laser from Vedrit's initial post - doesn't fit into a portable handle but is as big as a house, and yes it really has been built and does exist except as I said it's as big as a house (not portable).

The two contraptions - the military laser and the plasma blade "light-saber" - are not built by the same organization, the first is from the government and the second from a private company.

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