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How The Latest in High Tech Works
Popular Science has up a feature looking at "how it works", examining the innards of several new technology-based innovations. We've talked about the Sayaka endoscope in a pill, but did you know it captures images in 360 degrees? We've discussed the adorable little Pleo dino-bot, but did you know how adaptive it is to stimuli? And what about the tank-burning laser that can be fired from an airplane? Well, we haven't discussed that but I'm at a loss as to explain why. "A kind of reverse telescope called the beam expander inside a retractable, swiveling pod called the turret widens the beam to 20 inches and aims it. The laser's computer determines the distance to the target and adjusts the beam so it condenses into a focused point at just the right spot. Tracking computers help make microscopic adjustments to compensate for both the airplane's and the target's movement. A burst of a few seconds' duration will burn a several-inch-wide hole in whatever it hits."
hmm, a few seconds sounds like a nasty long time if you want to assassinate someone...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Laser to blind people or have other longtime effects (except death, "normal injury" comparable to bullets) on enemy soldiers are outlawed. http://www.potomacinstitute.org/publications/waypoint/Laser%20Waypoint%20Issue.pdf
How about actually searching for something as simple as "laser"? This previous article appears on the first page:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/13/0315230
Nice. I didn't believe the link should be considered a "troll" (love the asshole mods on here), but in this case, it really is. Link contains a trojan. Don't go clicky-clicky.