Laser technolgy seems pretty far from Star Wars stuff. How powerful is the most powerful, and are we reaching a limit on their power?

It can blow up popcorn into gigantic sizes and make swiss cheese turn into milk again :C~

I have heard that in some shipyards they use large industrial lasers to weld together ship hulls. I'm sure that sort of thing would be pretty hard on your car if you happened to drive through the beam.

The main problem with high powered laser technology is just that it's "high powered" it requires a great deal of energy to produce the output necessary.

Currently more emphasis has been placed on utilising Laser's in miniaturisation processes since it's possible to focus photons at a point.

I wouldn't suggest that you would ever have a Starwars (film) laser rifle for instance because the light would be emitted as a continuous beam from it's source as apposed to bolts. On top of that carrying a power pack large enough to produce the shots would make such a rifle infeasible.

Although their are laser weapons, they are really used for targeting other armaments as they do no damage themselves.

There were of course research projects high powered lasers, but since you might notice they aren't exactly a weapon wielded on the modern day battlefield you can probably realise that they just weren't cost efficient. (let alone energy efficient).

If you look outside of military use I guess there is one Power plant in the world that could be classed as the Largest laser. It's a tall tower where nearby mirror like reflector dishes focus the suns energy on the very top. Of course it's a remittant system since on a cloudy day the system is nonfunctional.

I've watched some intense videos on video google in which Iraqi's report having beam weapons fired upon them, obliterating life without bullets, pretty mean stuff. Click here to see it. (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8361811662480560988&q=star+wars+in+iraq&total=210&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1)

A laser in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is known to be the most powerful. It is intended for fusion experiments.

I wouldn't suggest that you would ever have a Starwars (film) laser rifle for instance because the light would be emitted as a continuous beam from it's source as apposed to bolts.
Ah, but those weren't laser rifles - they were "blasters". ;)

Ah, but those weren't laser rifles - they were "blasters". ;)
Ah Blasters were pistols, not Rifles :)

Not that I'm up on "laser"technology (tho I hear they are working on mounting them on sharks:)) but it seems the question would be better put in terms of 'current limits'.
If'n we can make it another hundred years, what with global warming and nuclear weapons runamok, an' all. We're just in the infancy of energy/light technology. And while there must be some limits to it, I think we're not even close to those limits.

Come on, we don't even have Phasers yet.

Example: look how fast phones advanced. It wasn't that long ago they were cranked and you asked someone to 'put me through'.

Another: For the vast majority of human existence people did not travel faster than oh say 20 mph, and that was rare.
But now it's normal to travel 70 mph down a concrete strip in a oversized tuna can.

But back to the surviving the next 100 years; just look at the question: '...the most damage...' not 'work' but 'damage'
I have my doubts...

Actually, I think we are pretty close to the limits with light technology, at least for the foreseeable future. You can postulate all the pretend physics you like, the simple fact is that light based weapons are not going to get beyond truck mountable, and certainly not like Start Trek phasers, for any time soon. The US army is developing truck mountable ones right now, for local area defence against missiles and shells.
If I recall it correctly, the threshold they use is about 100KW power output. making lasers that can do this is still rather tricky.

gah, stryder got this one! This is... high school stuff anyways. Gamma rays pwn lasors!

can't remember the name of the gun or who's testing the idea, but I heard of a rifle-sized weapon where the theory is that a laser gets the air from the gun to the target warm enough that when an electrical discharge is fired, the warm air (being a better conductor than the cooler ambient air), acts as a conduit for the charge to go from the gun right to the target. Sort of a longer-range tazer without wires. The laser does thie very quickly, but with much less power than the laser would need to, say, melt a hole through someone, so you can get away with the gun having more feasible battery options.

Warmer? I thought the idea was the laser ionised the air in front of it, so making a nice easy path for the electricity to go down.

Actually, I think we are pretty close to the limits with light technology, at least for the foreseeable future. You can postulate all the pretend physics you like, the simple fact is that light based weapons are not going to get beyond truck mountable, and certainly not like Start Trek phasers, for any time soon. The US army is developing truck mountable ones right now, for local area defence against missiles and shells.
If I recall it correctly, the threshold they use is about 100KW power output. making lasers that can do this is still rather tricky.
You did get that the "phaser" thing was a joke, right?

And I ain't 'postulatin' shit. At least, any specific thing.

"His name is is not recorded in the history books...a Director of the American Patent Office... In 1875 he sent in his resignation letter to the Secretary of the Board of Trade. What's the good of going on is the gist of what he said; there is nothing left to invent."
[The Morning of the Magicians, Editions Gallimard, France, 1960, Scarborough House, USA, 1991]

"Twelve years later, in 1887, the great chemist Marcellin Berthelot wrote: 'From now on there is no mystery about the universe'."
[Ibid]

"The difference between an ignorant man, and a learned man is infinitesimal when compared to the amount of knowlage possible." Einstein (near as I can remember the quote)

There is always more to know.

You can postulate all the pretend physics you like, the simple fact is that light based weapons are not going to get beyond truck mountable

Depends on what you want it for: about 30 years ago (it was certainly black and white TV in the UK) a science and tech programme (Tomorrow's World with Raymond Baxter) demonstrated a laser pistol.
The power pack was the size of a car battery and was said to be about half the weight of one.
It was stated to be powerful enough to kill a snake (demonstration was in some US desert area) and the battery held enough power to kill "half the snakes in that desert".
Turned down by the military as there was no requirement at the time.
(Presumably they weren't fighting snakes... :))

The most powerful weapons type laser is a chemical type that has a range of just over 1 mile yto actuall put a big hole in a piece of steel. It takes about 10 to 20 seconds to do that at that range and the laser starts to spread out as it travels farther away. The problem is that it has to "track" the object all of the time in order to bore through the material.ifa fast plane made some quick moves it can get away from the laser rather easily. It also takes allot of energy to get that laser to go any real distance and that's the bigger problem.

Warmer? I thought the idea was the laser ionised the air in front of it, so making a nice easy path for the electricity to go down.

You know what, I think you're right when it comes to the airbourne laser, but I don't know if that's the same philosophy behind a rifle-sized weapon, but yeah, I might be wrong here. After all, it'd be way cooler if this gun had a beam of light with a lightning bolt shooting down it emenating from the weapon :D

gah, stryder got this one! This is... high school stuff anyways. Gamma rays pwn lasors!
Except that there aren't any good gamma ray sources, and gamma rays are nearly impossible to focus/direct with optics.

You fools you know nothing of laser weapons.

Just today I was listening to the radio and they spoke of the top range laser weapon, that being the Laser Guided Pea-Shooter.

I have looked for pictures online but can't find any yet.

Except that there aren't any good gamma ray sources, and gamma rays are nearly impossible to focus/direct with optics.

http://coherentsource.net/gamma.html
http://cc.ysu.edu/~jjcarrol/grl.html

The most powerful lasers on Earth can explode even the smallest natural particles. That's quite powerful... it's just that they are so goddamned big.

Now... as far as weapons go-- we'll have miniturized rail guns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun) before we use lasers.... besides, they are way cooler anyway.

~String

Combo railgun laser? Laser softens armor, railgun round pierces like a needle?

http://coherentsource.net/gamma.html


grasors? that really doesn't seem possible to me. pretty interesting though.

grasors? that really doesn't seem possible to me. pretty interesting though.

hard luck - they're the next "big thing".
And the USN is looking at rail guns as a naval gunfire support weapon.
Trials started last year IIRC.
FCS (Future Combat System) = next generation tank is/ was looking at dual-calibre 23/35 mm rail gun as its main weapon.

http://coherentsource.net/gamma.html
http://cc.ysu.edu/~jjcarrol/grl.html
Neither of which contradicts my statements about there being no good sources or optics for gamma rays.

The only way to make gamma rays is with nuclear processes like radioactive decay/fission. Most schemes for gamma ray laser weapons involve using nuclear weapons as the gamma source - fine if want to shoot at things in space with remotely guided drone weapons, but completely useless if you want a weapon that you can carry around with you or mount on a vehicle.

The DOD was really into grasers for a while, but one of the biggest problems with them is that you have to aim your lasing rod directly at the target when the gamma ray-producing bomb detonates because you can't redirect the beam with optics like you could with an ordinary laser. It's almost impossible to aim them over long distances, especially since your aim is likely to be thrown off at the last moment as the nuke detonates.

grasors? that really doesn't seem possible to me. pretty interesting though.

It’s quite possible – the US tested some back in the 70s. They gave up on them because they couldn’t figure out a way to aim them.

When I think of highpowered lasers , I always think of this "lightcraft" that rocketed into the air while rotating - shoot up by a laserbeam .............

I saw it on Discovery Channel around year 2000 , where the people behind the project very proudly said, they were sponsored by NASA and US airforce ,
telling everybody, that they were going to launch this thing into space one day - even as a big shuttle with humans inside it ......
They also revealed that the propulsion was made by air exploding just below the craft due to the immense power of the ground laser beams ........

Shortly after this program on Discovery Channel they lost all their fundings - explanations were never given .......

I guess some bright guy figured out how much air there would be in space to make the propulsion ......vacuum .....:m: :p

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/laser_propulsion_000705.html

Neither of which contradicts my statements about there being no good sources or optics for gamma rays.
Okay:
http://www.europhysicsnews.com/full/23/article5/article5.html
And a bomb may not be needed:
It now appears that Carl Collins of the University of Texas at Dallas and co-workers from Romania, Russia, the Ukraine and the US have managed to achieve this feat. They bombarded an isomer of hafnium-178 with X-rays, and observed an increase in the number of high-energy gamma-rays released by the isomer (Phys. Rev. Lett. 1999 82 695).
From
http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/12/5/3

Oli, from your own link:

"A gamma ray laser would offer many applications because of the short wavelength and because of the high power density. Despite the considerable efforts of many groups, there still exists no idea of how to build such a device using present technology and our available knowledge of laser, nuclear and atomic physics."

Yeah, it's theoretically possible that with futuristic advanced technology we might be able to make useful graser weapons. But we don't have the technology to do it at the moment, and it will probably be a very long time before we do. We are much, much closer to building useful laser weapons than useful graser weapons.

Keep in mind that anything the general public knows about is about 30 years behind whatever the government knows about.