May 07, 2006

• Needs MORE cool picturs, but otherwise +1 cool laserz.
• You realize, of course, that no good can come of this. (250K .mp3 file)
• Please Settle, say no more, lest one night there is a knock ...
• Holy James Bond-ian laser facility! Those are some cool laser pics! Always stunningly wacky when real life takes on that Hollywood note. (If you blow up the first pic you can see a white persian sitting outside the door by the observation dome ;)
• In order for these things to actually work, and be able to intercept the missiles before they gain to much speed while descending. those lasers need to be based in Canada. And I don't see our governement... O, wait, uhm, go ahead and let them in! Mr. Harper likes his lasers green and hot.
• This is really interesting. Great link.
• What happens if the enemy satellites have mirrors?
• Then they have really nice hair.
• More bandwidth?
• I'm confused - I thought you couldn't see lasers from the side, unless they had dust interrupting them. Because they are focused light and all.
• Oh, man! This is awesome! I'm so glad my taxes are going to fund these cool lasers, rather than easily curing diseases or feeding hungry people. Let them eat lasers!
• I need to eat more lasers.
• If you blow up the first pic you can see a white persian sitting outside the door by the observation dome Um, we don't say Persian anymore - it's "Iranian".
• Yeah, only Persians say Persian...
• Don't worry, there won't be any soon.
• No laser *zap* or *bhew bhew*?
• I'm confused - I thought you couldn't see lasers from the side, unless they had dust interrupting them. That's true in space, but these are atmospheric lasers you the dust in the air reflects the laser light.
• From the same website: Phasers!. Well actually PHaSRs. "The Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response (PHaSR) is a rifle-sized laser weapon system that uses two non-lethal laser wavelengths to deter, prevent, or mitigate an adversary’s effectiveness". And also this cool photo: Simulated firing of high-energy laser from a C-130 in flight Full high-energy weapons gallery here. Thanks ActuallyS!
• Let me know when they come in blaster-gun form, please.
• I'm confused - I thought you couldn't see lasers from the side, unless they had dust interrupting them. That's true in space, but these are atmospheric lasers you the dust in the air reflects the laser light. posted by StoryBored at 05:26PM UTC on May 07, 2006 Okay, that makes sense. But I have seen lasers in rooms (generally science demonstrations) that are invisible. I guess not enough dust inside.
• EX-cellent! These will be perfect for slaying the sick and the poor with their *bhew bhew* sounds and their rayleigh and raman scattering of light off the atoms in the air... ...actually, the wiki article on lasers says that higher intensity pulsed beams (such as these) can also turn the air into a visible plasma (um, BADASS!)...which would also be accompanied by a 'popping' sound analogous to thunder produced by lightning if you look at the stars in the pic of the red laser, you'll see that they've moved, so its a time exposure...it's not that bright from the side the green laser may also be a time exposure...hard to tell with the jpeg, but it looks like theres some blurring of the stars...also we're looking more ALONG the laser here, and the beams are probably on the order of a hundred miles long to the convergence point...greater length=more dust and crap in the way=more visible
• and btw, i just took some robotussin for a cough...and then when i read the label i realized it wasnt FOR robots...........what with it being called ROBOtussin and........never mind
• It's Rob IT ussin, for robbers, silly!
• Missle command.