The Navy will have a laser capable of blasting through 2000 feet of steel by 2020

[The Straight Story]

The Navy will have a laser capable of blasting through 2000 feet of steel by 2020

Did I say 2000 feet of steel? What I meant was that by 2020, the Navy will have a laser capable of blasting through 2000 feet of steel PER SECOND. I’m no scientist, but that seems enough to burn a hole straight through the god damn moon before you can finish a cigarette and still have plenty of juice to carve a giant dick into the face of Mars.

The U.S. Navy has been working on directed energy weapons for years now, and for good reason: warships are the ideal platform for a powerful laser, at least initially, since they’ve got both the space and the power that weapons-grade laser systems require. These first lasers (to be deployed within the next decade) are likely to be traditional solid-state lasers that fire coherent beams of light, kinda like laser pointers. But unlike (most) laser pointers, these ones will be in the hundreds of kilowatts range, easily capable of blowing stuff up.

The problem with solid state lasers, though, is that the wavelength of light that they pump out is fixed, and depending on the weather, the beam can get significantly weaker over distance. So, the laser of choice by 2020 will be the far sexier free-electron laser, which can output energy in multiple wavelengths and doesn’t require any of the bulky and heavy solid-state infrastructure.

Free-electron lasers are basically just particle accelerators that can convert fast-moving electrons into photons. The more electrons you stuff into them, the more photons they spit out, at whatever wavelength (or wavelengths) you want. In February, the Navy’s prototype free-electron laser produced a 200 kilowatt beam capable of burning its way through 20 feet of steel per second. Ultimately, the target is a megawatt of power, which would mean eating a hole 2,000 feet of steel per second.

http://www.iheartchaos.com/post/4184280760/the-navy-will-have-a-laser-capable-of-blasting-through

[JVS]

1. AWESOME!

[northoftheborder]

2. What is the practical application for this, and how many trillion $$$ did it cost??????

[The Straight Story]

7. Practical: Strap the lasers (lazer) to sharks, send them sub hunting

[Blue Meany]

30. I think originally the idea was to put them on satelites so that

they could neturalize incoming missles. Of course, they could be used to vaporize armored divisions, towns, and any number of other things. And, since they are remotely-controlled they are subject to being hacked and turned on us. Lots of great applications...

[hack89]

39. Anti-ship missile defense

by 2020 sea skimming anti-ship missiles will be reaching hyper-sonic speeds (think Mach 10). When you consider that the radar horizon from a ship is about 10 miles, a laser is the only way to destroy such a missile before it hits the ship.

[aSpeckofDust]

3. "..and still have plenty of juice to carve a giant dick into the face of Mars."

The man responsible for the defacement of the planet was quoted to saying, "I did it for the lulz."

[Rex]

4. HA!

Riiggggghtttt. Just like laser guns and big warbots...not going to happen.

[rfranklin]

5. Gee, I'm sure that will be put to good use...

What could go wrong?

[indimuse]

35. my thought exactly...

hmm...

[Tesha]

6. I think I'll call bullshit.

Now I could sit here and work out the amount of
energy required to vaporize* a column of steel
2000 feet long and (say) 1/4 inch in diameter
in one second, but my gut says that there's no
power source available on a ship that can manage
that level of energy for more than a small fraction
of a second.

So this story is either contemplating a hole with
a very small diameter or the free electron laser
expending that level of energy for a very brief
fraction of a second.

A further clue is the power level cited: a megawatt.
Now your average arc welder manages to transfer
energy pretty-effectively to steel, and even though
it operates at a power level of (say) 2000 watts,
it takes quite a while for an arc welder to cut
a few inches of quarter-inch steel plate. At a
megawatt, we're only talking about power levels
that are 500 times higher and we're talking about
action at a distance, not the very intimate coupling
of the electric arc. And the welder doesn't have
2000 feet of steel vapors in the way of further
progress.

But hey, it's a "frickin' laser" so I guess people
are supposed to be impressed. Well, maybe if they
mount them on sharks' heads...

Tesha


*The steel has to be vaporized and the resulting
vapors have to clear out of the hole otherwise
the laser can't go any deeper than the molten
steel. So we're talking heat of fusion plus
heat of vaporization here.

[RZM]

8. I don't think I understand that

But somehow it sounds right

:)

[Rex]

9. No seriously, scuttlebutt has it that they are coming out with a new line

of photon (proton?) torpedoes in 2015...really neat stuff these kids are into.

[Tesha]

10. Matter/antimatter powered, no doubt.

(I wonder how many total anti-hydrogen atoms
have been made so far? It's probably still a
"countable" amount.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihydrogen

Tesha

[Gold Metal Flake]

12. C'mon. Energy is free.

Numbers are the tools of the debbil.

[formercia]

13. Good to see someone understands Physics

I think it's more like Microseconds, if that, but some Dufus extrapolated it out to seconds for effect.

[Tesha]

15. I was thinking specifically about experiments like the Z-machine...

...where very high power levels are achieved,
but for quite-brief periods of time.

Yes, I'd bet on an "extrapolation" error.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_machine



Tesha

[AngryAmish]

20. It will never be turned on for a full second

If it is turned on for .00025 second it still will burn through 6 inches of steel - assuming no interference.

Wonder how it would do in a thunderstorm.

[Tesha]

24. Depends on the wavelength and the range, of course.

At any wavelength we'd call "light", it probably
won't do all that well. But it's never foggy or
thunderstormy during demonstration firings, right?
It's always a nice clear day so the funders can
clearly see the things that get "blowed up real
good". ;)

Tesha

[Ozymanithrax]

11. Even the best laser would not burn a hole through the moon, for even laser

light spreads over distance. And, as posed elsewhere, it would take more power than would be available.

[Baclava]

14. You hear that aliens? Bring on that armada, come and get some!

We know you're listening.

[Rex]

32. Oh we can go that way!!!

http://video.adultswim.com/squidbillies/lerm.html

[Swede]

16. But can it read my scratched cds and dvds?

:shrug:

[Tesha]

17. "And when properly used, it can *REMOVE* the fingerprints."

Points for whoever cites the source of that quote. ;)

Tesha

[walldude]

18. Dirty Harry... THe quote is from the 5th Dirty Harry movie

aka The Dead Pool... Discussing the .45 auto-mag with his friend who happens to be played by the guy who was the bank robber "punk" in "Do you feel lucky Punk" in the first movie...

How's that?

[Tesha]

22. Right scene, wrong movie. Half-credit.

Albert Popwell appeared in four of the five Dirty
Harry movies, each time in a different roll.

He was also the pimp in Magnum Force and
Mustapha (the Black radical) in The Enforcer.
The two actors are good friends.

Tesha

[walldude]

29. Wait.. then what movie was it? Sudden Impact?

I thought it was the one where they messed up Harry's dog.. wasn't that the Dead Pool?



Oh and I have a thing for Patricia Clarkson which may be why I'm stuck on Dead Pool :)

[Tesha]

43. The movie was "Sudden Impact".

Horace gave Harry the dog while Harry was on assignment
down in Santa Cruz, err, that imaginary coastal town
of San Paulo. The dog then provides Harry's first
interaction with the character played by Sondra Locke
(Eastwood's then-lover).

Tesha

[EstimatedProphet]

19. Sudden Impact

[Tesha]

21. "Sudden Impact" is spot on-target. Props and bragging rights to you! (NT)

[liberal N proud]

23. Right out of James Bond

Die Another Day

[Tesha]

25. Well, it's one of "those" movies...

"What we call a ''LASER''..."

[hifiguy]

26. So the Navy will have its own death ray?

Lovely.

What in the blue hell practical application does this have other than burning a hole through the moon, as the OP suggests?

Too bad a fraction of this brainpower isn't dedicated to green energy technology.

[hack89]

40. Shooting down very fast anti-ship missiles

anti-ship missiles are approaching hypersonic speeds - over Mach 10. You have seconds to detect and engage such a missile. A laser is the only thing quick enough to do it - especially when you have multiple missiles heading right at you.

[Renew Deal]

27. I'd like to try it out.

Sounds like hours of fun.

:evilgrin:

[Hugabear]

28. I hear they're going to attach them to sharks

By strapping these lasers onto the heads of sharks, they can stealthily deploy them anywhere in the world.

Here's an artistic rendering of how it would look:

[Phoonzang]

31. So....the Navy is making themselves obsolete.

What's the point of having a bunch of fancy ships when you can just zap them from the shore. I'm assuming potential hostiles would develop this technology as well. Big, new, high-tech US aircraft carrier about to unleash hell on your military? ZAP. Problem solved.

[tuckessee]

33. Maybe then they'll be able to win a war. n/t

[BOG PERSON]

34. so

by 2020, we'll have gone from being the world's policemen to being the world's cartoon supervillains

[laruemtt]

36. Why? n/t

[IDemo]

38. Becau$e n/t

[snooper2]

37. Did an 8th grader make this up?

:rofl:

[TahitiNut]

41. Defense: A Fog Machine.

Just fill the air with billions and billions of tiny water droplets. :shrug:

[n2doc]

42. The Large Hadron Collider can do this already

It has enough beam energy to do this, but instead of being used to kill things it is being used to discover things. Guess the Europeans still are more civilized and advanced than us.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/cern-to-start-up-the-large-hadron-collider-now-heres-how-it-plans-to-stop-it