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US Navy Breaks Laser Record
ectotherm writes "The US Navy has broken the existing record for the power of a laser. Their new free-electron laser can burn through 20 feet of steel per second. 'Next up for the tech: additional weaponization. The Navy just awarded Boeing a contract worth up to $163 million to take that technology and package it as a 100 kW weapons system, one that the Navy hopes to use not only to destroy things but for on-ship communications, tracking and detection, too — using a fraction of the energy such applications use now, plus with more accuracy.' Now all we need to do is upgrade the sharks..."
... we really just need a small group to protect the environment and or a army that create Harmony between nations.
Sure, I'll vote for that as long as it's my army!
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk
Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?
What's even more crazy is that their ultimate goal is to reach a megawatt of power and burn through *2000* feet of steel per second. I'd imagine seeing a phalanx of tanks, and with one 3 second FWOOOONG! from the laser, our military crosscuts through them all in one sweep. Here's the Wired article I'm referring to: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/unexpectedly-navys-superlaser-blasts-away-a-record
The article said it can burn thru 20 feet of steel per second, not 200 per the slashdot version.
Even the 20 feet is likely misleading since I doubt it can sustain that power output for more than a fraction of a second, and anyways if you really were borign thru multiple feet of steel then all your vaporized steel in the borehole you were creating would get in the way of the laser.
Still very impressive though. I'd love to see the face of the first crackpot dictator whose ICBMs are shot down by one of these.
what diameter is the beam? volume/sec more important IMO
Hey Editors, were you asleep the day they taught reading comprehension? The FA says 20 feet per second, not 200. An order of magnitude is one hell of an error. You guys are pathetic. How about you slow down and practice a little quality control?
From the article: producing a supercharged electron beam that can burn through 20 feet of steel per second"
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/18/navy-breaks-world-record-futuristic-laser-getting-real/#ixzz1EPpwfpx0
This 500kV test was of just the accelerator (i.e. the bit the produces the electron beam part of a Free Electron Beam laser), not the FEL itself. It's this electron beam that is purported to do the extraordinary steel-cutting, not the laser beam. There is no mention of whether this was a momentary or sustained electron beam output. A 500kV accelerator on it's own isn't all that impressive, but once they package it into a small volume (room rather than building), and actually use it to lase, then that will be very impressive indeed.
Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?
Well, not so much 20 feet of steel directly, but there's a lot to be said for a weapon that could punch through 1-2 feet of layered tank armour, or melt a substantial hole in a warship. While many warships are not heavily armored nowadays, there are still exceptions.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Fricken' sharks not impressed.
Fricken' sharks are checking in for an upgrade...
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Just when I installed my new 200' thick steel bunker doors on my ocean-side villain headquarters.
Naval artillery and missiles can shoot over the horizon. Lasers have to be in line of sight.
Wrong science. This is physics, not biology. Unless you are talking about ill-tempered robotic sharks with frickin' laser beams...
"Hey, I know what we're gonna do today." -- Phineas Flynn
Everybody's complaining about the weaponization of this, and I agree they don't need any more toys, but I think this is a good thing because it's a great step towards laser launching systems and away from chemical rockets.
The military may have done it but it also could be adapted to commercial usages.
Heck one thing I can think of is dismantling large ships in boneyards. This would be good for any sort of metal recycling in fact.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Over 20 comments before someone mentions Real Genius? This was like the plot of the movie itself.
yea right.
What planet do you live on? But the humans of earth are a jealous lot, full of hate and mistrust, and belief that their way is the only way to live, and that all other ways must be eliminated.
Before you go spouting off stupid again why don't you take a look at the shear number of fanatics in the world(christian, muslim, jewish, whale watcher, environmentalist, whatever) and decide if your small army will work againist people who don't believe in reason and are willing to fight to the death for their illogic.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
"stop the nonsensitive" eh?
I disagree, I think we have to stop the overly-sensative!
Sapere aude!
Or even sensitive. Lol, I don't know why I even bother to preview when I miss simple stuff like that...
Sapere aude!
A Real Genius moment here. Why would the U.S. Navy need a LASED stream of electrons that can cut through 20 feet of steel?
Sharks that can carry those frikkin lasers.
What's that expressed as houses of popcorn?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?
Remember that laser illuminance falls off quite rapidly with distance, especially in humid or dusty conditions. Having the power to burn through 20 feet of steel in perfect conditions at a relatively close range means you'll probably be able to still knock down that missile that's miles away in bad conditions.
There's also the factor of being able to keep the laser in one spot long enough to do damage. 1 second is a very long time to keep a beam in one spot so you need enough power that even a fraction of a second can do considerable damage.
Sapere aude!
I didn't see any data about blooming or effective range. Any ideas? Is there a physicist in the house?
If lasers ever become a serious threat against naval vessels, you could attach mirrors to divert the beams. At least around vital areas. Like those Schürzen the germans attached to their early panzer models (prior to tigers and panthers) to take the edge off of russian anti-tank rifles (and allegedly hollow-charge ordnance like bazooka rounds).
Yes, the more important question is can it pound a nail through a 6 inch board...oh wait , that wasn't with the laser...
There some more information to be found here: http://www.jlab.org/FEL/ You could also watch the video http://www.jlab.org/FEL/Movie28.mov , but that was a bit disappointing (no KABOOM).
Would this tool help to prevent an event similar to 9/11 or metro explosions?
Would not a co-development be a better choice?
Well, you may drive at 60 miles/hour and not mean to drive for 60 miles. In this case, it could cut through 1/2" steel plating in 1/2 inch / (20 ft/second) = 2 milliseconds. Does that make sense?
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Anyone else a bit concerned about something like this in orbit? There wouldn't be any place on earth safe from it.
Someone needs to take there toys away from them and stop the nonsensitive before they start testing it on us, which we all know they will, heck disband all military we really just need a small group to protect the environment and or a army that create Harmony between nations.
I'm pretty sure this was a joke.
Pew, pew, pewwww... Luke, I am your Father.
http://www.LinuxMedNews.com Revolutionizing Medical Education and Practice.
Wow, that was one of the worst articles I've ever read.
So to "create power" requires energy. Uh, ok... I'm with you, sort of.
OK, so they "injected" 500kV of "juice." Fuck you, fox news.
So wait, the power output of this thing is actually 14kW, and the goal of the program is to reach 1MW. But apparently they were at 10kW four years ago... so what's this article actually about? The fact that they increased the voltage to 500kV from the previous 320kV? Why does that matter?
Oh ok, I guess the big development here is that they're using superconductors... or something. It's tough to tell, because "super-conducting electron power" is a series of words that, when strung together, don't mean a fucking thing.
Clearly.
That's 80 dBm.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"It's all very well to laugh at the military, but when one considers the meaning of life, it is a struggle between alternative viewpoints of life itself. And without the ability to defend one's own viewpoint against other perhaps more aggressive ideologies, then reasonableness and moderation could quite simply disappear. That is why we will always need an army, and may God strike me down if it were to be otherwi..." ZAP!
I am officially gone from
Per second? How thick?
Have gnu, will travel.
They said they were at 10KV four years ago. Now they are looking for 1MW. That's kilovolts vs MegaWatts. The article said they were at 500KV. There is no indication how many watts they are at. The article didn't have enough information to understand how close they are to the goals.
Volts and Watts are related by Amps. P=IE Watts = Amps * Volts.
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
This just in... China learns how to mass produce mirrors and tape them all over their ICBMs.
You realize that the majority of technological advances through human history have been from war technology? There are innumerable applications for lasers like this, more peaceful ones than not. Furthermore, why should the US car what anyone else thinks? Humans come from tribes and tribes fight eachother for resources. Nations are like big tribes. The Chinese are pulling an economic war with the rest of the world, and also spying on everyone. Why shouldn't the US be able to show the Chinese we still have some abilities they don't have and they can't just do whatever they want to us. If we were defenseless you would see quite a few nations trying to step all over us, and probably all over Canada as well.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
The problem with weaponized lasers has always been that it's hard to keep them exactly on one spot long enough to really do damage. I mean, against a static target you're probably not going to need 20 feet of steel in a second, but if you're aiming at a ballistic missile then maybe you need to get through a quarter inch of steel in a millisecond. Then of course there's the typical "paint a mirror on your missiles" defense - but mirrors aren't perfect, and some fraction of the damage gets through (and once it starts melting, the mirror gets less and less perfect).
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
20 feet of solid steel at a 1 micron hole? 20 linear feet of sheet steel at 1 micron thick? What are the exact specs?
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
the humans of earth are a jealous lot, full of hate and mistrust, and belief that their way is the only way to live, and that all other ways must be eliminated
Suddenly the foreign policy and economically destructive wars perpetuated by the United States make sense.
Uh ... what? Do you really believe that the United States is hell-bent on eliminating other ways of life? Do you really believe that (because if so, that's just bizarre) or are you just America-bashing for fun? I'd say the Soviets did a hell of a lot more in that regard than the United States ever did. Many of our previous conflicts were ostensibly driven by ideological differences (although, if you dig a little deeper you'll usually find that there was more to it than that) but since the Cold War is over we're far more focused on the economic benefit of our overseas campaigns. Which isn't necessarily better, but it still has nothing to do with converting everyone to our brand of representative republicanism. We don't really care how you want to live: just buy our stuff and sell us your oil. Oh, and listen to our music and buy a lot of our DVDs.
but the truth is that the United States is not paying for a defensive military.
Why would you ever have thought that? More to the point, what do you mean by "defensive"? Not all conflicts have to be fought on one's own territory to be considered "defensive", and sometimes investments have to be made because of obligations to allied nations. Hell, World War II, if you have the ability to grasp the big picture, was in fact a defensive war. The reality is, though, that we've cut back substantially on our military capability since the end of the Cold War. Why? Because (so it was believed at the highest levels of our government) the world is now safe because the Soviet Empire collapsed, and we don't need all these men and machines. So this idea that America is continuing to build this ever more massive military is just wrong. Period. Furthermore, the current Iraq conflict is stretching our ability to deploy personnel: we just don't have the manpower or equipment that we used to have, even going back to the first Gulf war.
Whether or not we made the correct choice in downsizing our military machine remains to be seen. But it is most definitely not what it once was.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
what we use the army for isn't what it is designed for . The US army aren't police and shouldn't be used to keep the peace.
I also agree that something has to give in the USA spending strategies. However while we may only rarely directly benefit from some of those, things like the internet, UAV's, even submersibles all allow us to see our word and do things that would never come to bear without someone losing tons of money on them to begin with.
a lot of the really cool tech and refinements out there today are because the USA military spent tens of millions 2 decades ago on abstract and weird ideas that had very little return.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
"because the USA military spent tens of millions 2 decades ago on abstract and weird ideas that had very little return."
Nowadays they spend the millions on training and weapons for Afghan military and police and in the US thousands of teachers and nurses get the boot to pay for it.
Your comment of the purpose of the armed forces vs how they are applied reminded me of a talk Thomas Barnett gave for TED about six years ago. :P
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace.html Interesting idea, even if so ambitious as to never happen
Been done already....
How soon before we see this on a Chinese ship?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
TFA says one advantage of this laser is that, because the wavelength is adjustable, you could theoretically compensate for the atmosphere by picking a wavelength to which the atmosphere is mostly trasnparent.
Um, on your intuition that maybe the military should be bigger, what multiple of the rest of the world's force projection capability seems sensible to you? And why? Do you acknowledge that our spending is not static against rivals? That a large, standing army will sometimes be misused? That opportunity costs exist?
I forget what 8 was for.
I feel dirty about commenting on an article from Fox News but it seems that there was some concern in the U.S. recently about a new long range high speed anti-ship missile which was deemed a possible "Carrier Killer". In addition to its long range, the high speed would make it difficult for the terminal defenses (Phalanx guns) to knock the incoming missile(s) out of the sky in the few seconds they would be in range.*
Of course, for a laser, a few seconds is an eternity. Probably the big problem would be to ensure the beam would remain on the dwell point long enough for it to burn through the casing. But if these things have good enough targeting to knock down an ascending ICBM from several hundred kilometers away (as in the air force version), I can't imagine it would be a big problem for a ship based version to take out an approaching (read range getting smaller) missile within a few kilometers (or less!). (I realize that a boost phase ICBM is a "fragile" target compared to a possibly hardened warhead with ablative shielding but remember the inverse-squared law! And the vastly easier targeting at short range against a hot infrared target instead of a cold body in space).
This is a productive use of the hundreds of megawatts of electric power already on tap in a nuclear powered carrier. Against heavier targets (ships) the navy will use rail-guns, also a great user of electric power. (I would imagine the laser would overheat before it could cut through the hull of a warship).
*The Chinese could defeat this (and probably any defensive system) using nuclear warheads on their anti-ship missiles but they would risk a strategic nuclear exchange.
While the Pentagon might have $BILLIONS to spend on ever bigger lasers, what I'm more interested in is more efficient lasers. What's the most efficient working laser now? Preferably one that outputs over 100W of light, but the most efficient ones in different output power classes are interesting.
Presumably the Pentagon is also interested in efficient lasers of medium power, since just laser targeting or even light duty laser cutting is more reasonable to arm a soldier with if it doesn't require a Humvee full of batteries/fuelcells to power it all day.
--
make install -not war
The US Navy is really pushing "ammo-less" weapon systems because of the nature of the threat of the Chinese arsenal, especially the air force.
In a nutshell, the US could fire everything it had at Chinese jets, and score a kill with each shot, and still face an overwhelming force. The same goes for US bullets and PRC soldiers. So of course they want lasers. All you need is electricity... and lots and lots of technicians.
(Nobody's asking why the US is attacking China in these scenarios... that's the most bothersome part.)
I can see the fnords!
The US Navy has broken the existing record for the power of a laser.
[...]and package it as a 100 kW weapons system[...]
So, NIF isn't a thing anymore? Or is 100kW more than 500TW and someone forgot to tell me?
The JLab FEL has three segments: an photocathode raised 350kV and now 500kV from ground, a pair of superconducting (SC) cavities that take the low energy beam to ~8 MeV/c, and a small linear accelerator with 24 SC cavities which takes it to 80-140 MeV/c. Laser is pulsed at 75 MHz to photocathode. The efficiency of conversion of energy from electron to light is highly dependent on the electron bunch shape. It's easier to get a good bunch if you start at 500 kV than at 350 kV.
Frequency of the output light is determined by the electron energy and the undulator magnetic field.
Mirrors are cryogenicly cooled and large.
Outcoupling is via a hole in one mirror. It can be as high as 10% in the IR laser. I don't know the UV number.
If electron beam quality is high enough one can do without mirrors. The LCLS at SLAC is an x-ray FEL which does this. Search for SASE FEL for more info.
The JLab FEL uses SC cavities because this allows the recovery of most of the energy of the "spent" electron beam after the lasing section, increasing wall plug efficiency, i.e., light/(power in) roughly a factor of ten. The Navy likes this.
Cornell has a proposal to NSF to build a light source using an energy recovered linac, ERL.
Yes, keep insulting Americans, on an American server running American software, on an American-created internet, with an American-created computer, while telling us all how negatively America affects your day-to-day life. Though ironically, I'd say your nationality is actually most likely to be... American. And that's all kinds of psychological issues right there... more daddy issues than a season of "Lost".
I thought lasers attenuate very quickly in the atmosphere.
Maybe this will be more useful for zapping enemy space cruisers.
TFA says one advantage of this laser is that, because the wavelength is adjustable, you could theoretically compensate for the atmosphere by picking a wavelength to which the atmosphere is mostly trasnparent.
Well, it certainly helps but (speaking as an instrumental chemist here) no matter what wavelength you choose there will always be some absorption and scattering in the atmosphere . There's also beam spread which can be improved through better optics but can't be completely eliminated. All of those factors are dependent on distance and will serve to reduce laser illuminance.
Greater distances also affect the aim of the beam since what you really control is the angle of the beam. Simple trigonometry will show you that more distance means less control and thus the likelihood increases that you won't be able to get the beam concentrated on a critical spot for a decent amount of time.
So, you generally want to have a beam energy far above what it would take to make a kill under optimal conditions. You can always build the beam to reduce the length of the bursts or to output a lower energy level if you don't need the extra energy.
Sapere aude!
Really? This article was written by the same local news channel?
Now all we need to do is upgrade the sharks...
Geneticists: Workin' on it...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
When will this technology be available for shark head attachment?
"Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?"
Can you say "industrial metal cutting"? Some metal is laser-cut today, but being able to easily cut large thick steel sections would save even more time/work/money.
http://www.americanmachinist.com/304/Issue/Article/False/86876/Issue
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
You'd probably enjoy Gundam 00.
In that anime, the world pretty much has unlimited power thanks to a ring of solar panels around the earth which are tethered to the planet with three equidistant orbital elevators. Three superpowers form around these elevators, and there are more than a few straggler countries who don't play ball and therefore are shut out of the free energy. The superpowers are in a deadlocked cold war with one another. Meanwhile, private military countries fight wars for their benefactors all over the world.
Enter Celestial Being with their giant robots. This being Gundam, of course everyone has giant robots, but CB's are vastly more powerful. Imagine a fighter jet that had unlimited ammo and flight time and had armor tough enough to take dozens of missiles and thousands of bullets - even if it were just a small strike force of four of these fighters, how many air forces in the world could stand against them? Think that, but instead giant 30 foot tall robots whose pilot aim to end war by (ironically) blowing up any advantage any one side has.
Technically, this should be the United Nations, I suppose. Someone starts a war and all the other countries should smack them the fuck down. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Wrong science. This is physics, not biology. Unless you are talking about ill-tempered robotic sharks with frickin' laser beams...
No, he meant cute cuddly robotic sharks with simulated lasers.
It's only a matter of time now before we start having satellites equipped with this sorta stuff.... AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!
Yeah... well, I've known French people IRL and online, and their main complaint regarding the US was the latency and time zone difference. None of them actually lived up to the "snobby French" stereotype. You also use a number of American English cliches and idioms that they never did. Sorry, but the kind of polemic angst you display is something typically entirely American, a product of our lovely partisan media. The only people I've *ever* seen display strong anti-Americanisms are ... Americans. Your little rants are more anti-American than Juba the Baghdad Sniper propaganda. And that's saying a lot, cause the Iraqi insurgency ain't too fond of us. There's a good deal of the US with French ancestry, myself included. It would be ridiculous. Sorry. Don't see it. You're about as French as FPS Russia is Russian.
In case you wanted to use Google translate to paste something French-sounding in, allow me to preempt you: Gilles de Rais et de Jeanne D'Arc, héros national. Woah, I'm totally French. Or am I Russian? , , . (You won't find THAT phrase on Google) Point being, what people claim to be, and actually are on the internet are often two entirely different things.
Hah. I guess this thread software can't handle cyrillic unicode.
Name another country that hasn't been as belligerent and warmongering as they were able to be.
Yeah, it would be fantastic if the U.S. went all peacenik, but realistically, any country, any people, with their economy and relative safety would (and have, in the past) build up their military and throw their weight around. It's asking a little much for Americans to take an enlightened that everyone else has failed at taking, and crapping on them for not doing it is pretty simpleminded.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I wasn't going to reply in this thread, it seems a bit pointless with the cry baby troll moding, but I like your comment so I will reply.
Short answer, no.
My comment was an over the top somewhat ridiculous statement responding to another over the top fear mongering paranoid delusional "the world is out to get us" comment. And logically if all humans on earth are such garbage it should follow that people in the United States are also humans who are subject to the listed human weaknesses and threatening characteristics. I know for a fact that people in the United States do not fit this crappy characterisation of humans and I know from the foreigners I have interacted with that it is the same elsewhere. I am sorry that you and the moderators failed to catch that, although your questioning leads me to believe that you may have caught it but were not absolutely sure.
And on another note, criticism of one's own nation and politics is not bashing. Attacking criticism because it is criticism is tantamount to being a cry baby nationalistic whore. I like your comment because you bring up some valid points but be careful about labeling criticism as bashing. I hope the only reason you mentioned bashing was due to the outrageous nature of my comment.
I think many people miss the underlying economic causes of many conflicts and I think it plays a greater role than many would like to admit, it is unethical and evil.
I was with you on the fact that, perhaps other than religious evangelism in foreign nations, the U.S. people and government are happy to let people of sovereign nations live the way they want in most cases but the 'buy our shit and sell us your resources' policy isn't any better. But perhaps you are alluding to this circumstance when you noted that the economic based campaigns aren't much better.
Where a battle is fought does not determine whether actions are defensive or offensive but I feel I must point out that defense is much broader than fighting battles. The war in Afghanistan was a defensive war because the United States was attacked the the Al Queda organization that was based in and harbored by Afghanistan and their government. The Iraq war was offensive because there was no credible threat from within Iraq from the government or any harbored organizations. The U.S. Nuclear Forces and the ICBM systems are an offensive weapon used defensively through coercion. Reagan's negotiation of the START I treaty was defensive, the talks between U.S. and Chinese military leaders is defensive, the Patriot Missile system is defensive. Hopefully that elucidates my understanding of "defensive".
It is less a question of how much was spent in the past on the military versus what is spent today, the question is how much is needed to achieve the desired objective. Looking at what the United States spends on military versus every other nation suggests to me that we are spending much more than is necessary. To use an automobile analogy, :), if you need a vehicle to commute to work you may want a Bugatti Veyron but that doesn't mean you can't do the same commute just
If your idea is Harmony at any cost ( some sort of global ideology ) , i don't want to live on your world.
The fact is , there are differences between people , and there are idealists in all groups of people.
This naturally leads to conflict , but that's not a problem : if those people are allowed to voice there opinion , there may be heated discussions , but the end result will probably be something useful for everyone.
However, if you block certain ideas and opinions from public debate , then you are causing problems , because you effectively force the idealists to use other methods to impose themselves. And this will often result in violence in the end.
Slipping shoelaces ?
They manage to scale the frickin' lasers down to frickin' shark-size.
They can just manufacture massive sharks in the meantime! With a few camera tricks no one will notice ...
After capitalism was made a crime, Reno threatened to jail the bankers unless they gave mortgages to poor people. The bankers asked where they would get the money and the government agreed to lend them 30 times their capital. The resulting inflation in home values resulted in the creation of 23 million jobs during that administration. When the bankers ran out of government money to continue inflating home values, they asked to be able to borrow 60 times their capital. Obama balked. So the banks would have to go bankrupt and lose the 30 times their capital they owed the government. To prevent the public panic from the bank's going bankrupt, the government is buying up the bum mortgages at face value for homes worth a fraction of that. Since capitalism is still illegal, the only productive enterprise other than jailing their citizens for being politically incorrect is to export war to the world.
I posted a request for a non-fox news source and was marked a troll. What's happened to /.?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
I can't believe I'm the only one seeing this...
Per wikipedia: "To create a FEL, a beam of electrons is accelerated to almost light speed. The beam passes through an FEL oscillator in the form of a periodic, transverse magnetic field, produced by arranging magnets with alternating poles within a laser cavity along the beam path. This array of magnets is sometimes called an undulator, or a "wiggler", because it forces the electrons in the beam to follow a sinusoidal path."
And we're going to mount this on Naval ships.
Laser weapons that fire beams of light stimulated by an undulation of electrons, or in other words, some sort of wave motion gun...