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"I don't know where you get your delusions, laser brain." - Princess Leia, talking to Han Solo
Definition of a laser:
Laser guns: every science fiction series has them. What's interesting is that in most science fiction series, they actually aren't lasers. Usually they are seen as an energy bolt of some sort. Some series also have slight variations, like the lightsaber in Star Wars. The application of actual lasers in the SciFi series featured on this site only takes place in Dune, and maybe Animorphs. So let's discuss how this might be implemented. The government has developed several applications for lasers. A low-powered laser can blind enemy sensors or even people. A high-powered laser is capable of setting a person's clothes on fire or burning them. If you take this and multiply it by 10, you have what is called in Dune a lasgun. I won't go into the details on this page, but don't you think if we can burn a person with a high-powered laser we could cut them in half with a ultra-high-powered laser, a. k. a. a lasgun? The main problem is size. To give you a general idea, a laser generating a megawatt of energy can burn through a jet from six miles away, although it would have to stay in contact with the jet for one or two seconds. Our most powerful lasers right now are the two 2.2 Despite all this discussion on burning holes through jets and killing people, lasers are used today all the time. They are tools! In fact, you probably have one sitting right in front of your face right now! That's right, you heard me. Your CD-ROM drive has a laser in it. I'm sure some of you out there have heard those commercials on the radio talking about laser eye surgery. Even if I risk getting back on the destructive side of things, guns use laser sights. All these are because lasers are able to focus on a tiny, precise, spot, and stay tightly focused over distances. Lasers can also be used to burn through things that are usually hard to cut (like steel), cutting them whichever way you like without blades or motors.
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Hi, it's me again, MC2! Here we discuss the technology behind lasers today, what would be needed to make them into what we see in SciFi. We discuss what they are being used for currently. Also here you can find an explanation of each technology in each series. You can also find an explanation of the shielding that almost always goes along with this technology for protection from it. Just click on the name of the series on the sidebar, and off you go!
megawatt lasers, Alpha and MIRACL. The problem is that these would fill half of the Millennium Falcon! Even a laser with enough energy to kill a person or burn through a wall would be the size of a truck. Kinda hard to fit in a holster, huh? Lasguns are supposed to be guns that will fit in your hand, not take up half the room on your spaceship. The reasons these lasers are so large are heat and energy. Lasers have only a 1-30% efficiency, which means that only that much of the energy pumped into the laser emerges out of the laser. Most of that wasted energy is released as heat. In powerful lasers, this heat becomes very intense, shattering the laser's mirrors. Elaborate cooling systems must be devised, which often come out very large and very heavy. The problem of power is very interesting. Lasers must have energy pumped into them if they are to pump it back out again, right? And even when we do, there's the problem of efficiency explained above. The military is very excited that they can fit a 15-megawatt generator in a tractor trailer. But this means that at best, they still will only get 4.5-megawatts worth of power out of it. These limitations have stopped most SciFi authors in their tracks. They have been forced to change over to energy beams instead of lasers to be used for weapons. You can see more about this by clicking on one of the links on the sidebar concerning the particular series you want to hear about.