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Warfare at the speed of light
-EFL- Check out the whole article, interesting stuff...In Bob Yamamotoâs lab, light devours. He straps on emerald green goggles. A technician stabs a fire button and calls out the computer countdown. "Three ... two ... one ..." Then ... nothing. Just a buzz of electronics and an ephemeral glow in this darkened room at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. But inside Yamamatoâs target chamber, a block of steel spits flame and molten metal. In those two seconds, 400 blasts of light poured into slabs of clear, manmade garnet. Swollen in energy, the crystalâs atoms then unleashed torrents of infrared light to ricochet 1,000 times between two mirrors and multiply, finally escaping as 400 pulses of pure, square beam. Kilowatt for kilogram, this is the worldâs most powerful solid-state laser. Its invisible beam drilled Yamamotoâs inch-thick steel plate in two seconds. Add larger crystals and it will eat steel a mile or more away.
Posted by: ---------<<<<-- 2003-10-20 |
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| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=20117 |