OT Interesting news item

[El_Phil]

Lasers, uhh Bell Labs wasn't it?

Unless it's the DVD blue laser, that was random dudes at Oxford Scientific. Well sort of. Yes it was a blue laser, but not made the way everyone now makes them today.

Honestly that modified jumbo has been being fiddled with for so long I think it's possible the nukes will have decayed before it's declared finished and operational. Bear in mind for every test where something works, something else goes wrong with it. Still as a low priority research job what can you expect?

[Wolfman77]

Well, a year ago they were working on this
http://weekendpundit.blogmosis.com/l...nd/025046.html
at 3.8 microns I believe that put it in the infrared part of the spectrum. I don't know if they are using anything similar to this or not.

No date on this one
http://www.smdc.army.mil/FactSheets/HELSTF.pdf

[Kamog]

If they put shiny mirrored surfaces on the missile, the lasers would reflect off.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

/me collects all the shiney, shiney missiles...

[Phoenix-D]

Kamog said:
If they put shiny mirrored surfaces on the missile, the lasers would reflect off.

Very briefly, and then the laser burns through the mirror and POOF. Mirrors aren't totally reflected, and that .01% is a !%$ when you're talking about stopping a weapons-level laser.

Doesn't count the difficulty in finding IR-reflective stuff, either.. It is possible, just not as common.

EDIT: Speaking of lasers, I read a nasty idea for a weapon a while back.

You take a powerful laser, and set it up so it gets split into many relatively weak beams. Then you shine a normal light into the same arrangement. Now, the laser won't be visible from a distance unless you're looking at it straight on..but the regular light will scatter more, and will be.

The human eye is instintively drawn to look at the shiny light, and the instant it does it also look straight into the laser.

Instant blindness for almost everyone within LOS of the disco ball of doom..