Chinese laser gun - beginning of the end of the projectile era?

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briandg

New member
brian, what the article said was pure fluff and pipe dreams.

“Entanglement is incredibly delicate, it requires very specific conditions – low temperatures and an isolated system – and when those conditions change the entanglement disappears,” he said.

“With the support of the academic community in Adelaide, interstate and globally, I aim to extend the theory of the quantum battery, construct a lab conducive to the conditions needed for entanglement, and then build the first quantum battery.”
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The point I'm wanting to make is that no matter how you plan it, introducing electrical charge to a matrix of entangle atoms will collapse it. A physics stands right now, it would require magic to do this, to create a system that can be used to absorb, store, and release energy in such a manner.

His intention is to develop theory. then to try and implement it. then, the core issue will be that he is going to have to work on a system of entanglement that isn't fragile.
 
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briandg

New member
A drone can never replace a soldier. a drone can't take cover behind a rock or in a fox hole, and the things are absolutely inflexible. They can't possibly be capable of observation as a man can, too much chaff. Aerial drones violate one of the important laws of combat, you are too predictable. straight line at constant velocity is trap shooting. a chickadee bobs as it flies, but can still be predicted and killed. These problems with purely mechanical design are enough to destroy the program. Then, we would have to design power cells that could send a vehicle hundreds of miles while carrying heavy cargo, and using sensors and processors every inch of the way.

The barriers that stand between us and movie magic weaponry defy the current understanding of physics.
 
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briandg

New member
I'm not sure how many years ago it was announced that we would be able to make invisible tanks. A scientist had managed to "cloak" a copper cylinder from reflecting microwaves. If I remember correctly, tanks are not copper cylinders, nor are microwaves sunlight. we are also lef with the situation that tanks make noise, trail smoke, put off heat, tear up grass and sand, and in general, make themselves known in dozens of ways. The idea that a tank can sneak up on you is absolutely absurd. These articles belong in the onion.

This is not the article that I read years ago, this one doesn't predict cloaking vehicles.


https://newsok.com/article/2958604/scientists-create-cloak-of-invisibility
 
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Brian Pfleuger

Moderator Emeritus
briandg said:
The barriers that stand between us and movie magic weaponry defy the current understanding of physics.
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Yes, that's true... but we also know that our understanding of physics is seriously flawed... and my point is, just a few years ago quantum computing defied our understanding of physics... Today, that's quantum entangled batteries. A few years ago, machine learning was all but a fantasy. 50 years ago a hard drive was as big as a refrigerator and held less data than a floppy disk that replaced just a few years later... now we can fit gigabytes onto a device that's only as big as it is because we need to be able to pick it up...

and our abilities and knowledge continue to grow exponentially.
 
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jag2

New member
When I was a kid, Dick Tracy talked on his wrist radio, corny sci-fi movies had rocket ships return to earth and land on their tail. They didn’t even think about having a camera on the ship that would show the stages separate on live tv. I don’t dismiss anything any more.
 
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Jim Watson

New member
Clarke's Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

a high power energy weapon. Put a super, absolutely accurate rangefinder on it.
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Why do you need a rangefinder on a beam weapon? WYSIWYG

I can visualize a laser as a coax weapon on a tank. Thin skinned enemy in line of sight, save your projectile ammo for targets requiring penetration.
 
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DaleA

New member
a high power energy weapon. Put a super, absolutely accurate rangefinder on it.
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I wondered about that too thinking maybe the randomly occurring micro-black hole between you and the target might bend the laser light beam but then I thought it would do the same for the range finder too...

Says Dale whose scientific creds are that he got confused once and took a "physics" course instead of a "physical fitness" course.
 
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Roamin_Wade

Moderator
That's actually not a new technology. I worked in a refinery a decade ago and there was a guy I worked with who had turned his star pointer into a laser that would burn a person from 100 feet away. It was just the size of a pen. You may remember about 10 years ago when the FAA was complaining of the the star pointers (teachers use them too for chalk board pointing) that people were getting and shining at aircraft at night and causing possible sight problems. He had bought a simple pointer and ordered something from China that replaced something in the pointer that enabled it to transfer heat as well as the point of light. He was lighting matches with it and burning friends at lunch that tried napping on their break. He could twist the pen and cause the light to have a larger point and losing its concentrated heating ability. It was highly banned to even have the regular pointer in the refinery so he only brought it to work a couple of times. I think it was called a heat emitting LED.
 
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TXAZ

New member
Jim Watson noted:
"Why do you need a rangefinder on a beam weapon? WYSIWYG"

You mean other than beam dispersion and attenuation in free space?

Actually a laser rangefinder is not a bad idea. There aren't any perfect optics. If there were, speeders using laser jammers wouldn't work, as they'd never see the perfect 2" diameter beam hitting their license plate.

Further moisture, smoke, fog, temperature differences, turbulance and other real world atmospherics can cause the strength of the beam to be reduced by a factor of 10-(literally) 1,000,000,000,000 per mile.

A laser rangefinder makes a lot of sense to measure the maximum effective range of the weapon and if the target is within that range (and if power can be adjusted down to achieve the desired effect).
 
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Jim Watson

New member
Yes, I can see a rangefinder graduated according to effectiveness.
Armored target, hard target, soft target, harassing fire.
 
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