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Phasers, Tasers and Stun Guns, oh my!
Thoth_Ptolemy writes "Here's an article on a ranged non-lethal weapon that freezes the targets body without killing them.
Wonder how long it'll be until we can whack people with Light Sabers and such. I see a lot of potential for the SCA.
" Geez-if I could have a copy for when Rob gets...frisky things would be much better in my day. To be fair, they haven't build a prototype yet, but the concept is just too neat.
Oh I would just LOVE to have a phaser even if it only stunned people. How easy it would be to mug people then... *zap*. You'll be walking down the street one minute and out cold the next and wake up with your wallet gone.
Nikola Tesla described many such beam weapons that use UV light (no lasers then) to ionize a path in air and then use a high-voltage-high-frequency pulse to send the "shock" or "stun". This was also the priniciple behind many "Star Wars" weapons.
:).
I would think that anyone with access to a physics lab could hack something together with a UV flashlamp, or a UV laser or better ($$$). A tesla coil would make a great source of power, and there are many miniturized or even solid-state tesla coils available. (www.amazing1.com) You only need a conductive path through the air for a VERY short time to zap someone, and you can get a pretty good charge from a tesla coil - even a small one.
Those of you south of the border might have some problems with the ATF though hehe.
If anyone has access to the flashlamps/lasers that could directionally ionize air, send me a msg and I'll share some tesla coil circuitry
Steve
n706@unb.ca
This is freakin' scary stuff. Like previously stated, muggings would be of great ease, and corrupt government figures abusing it as well...
Bad cops bad cops. Whatcha gonna do. Whatcha gonna do when they freeze ray you?
Excuse me? Since when is "stun anything that moves" a good police policy?
Also, I really wonder how well this will work against someone wearing a winter coat. They have problems with felons not falling down when hit with conventional tasers, too.
Hmm. Police zap moving vehicle. Moving vehicle, now without power brakes and steering, continues down the road at its previous velocity until it plows into something. Nope, sounds just like a CHiPs episode!
Still, it would be useful for preventing people from taking off in a car.
Though, wouldn't it be bad if the anti-car raygun accidentally hit a human being like a random pedestrian?
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I NEED one of these. Perfect for those boring meetings.
Corporate Type: "And so, through the process of structured quantitative technology incubation, we can proactively synergise our value proposition to facilitate the globalization of..."
*click*
*fzzrrrt*
--John Riney
jwriney@awod.com
In a similar vein, would not firing a UV laser at an approaching thundercloud force it to discharge? You'd need a large Faraday cage/lightning rod around the laser to protect it, but otherwise lightning storms could be controlled and directed.
Wouldn't that be neat? Seeing arcs of lightning, as performance art?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
A back-of-the envelope calculation: The beam has to ionize a path say about a micrometer on a side and about ten meters long. If a small current (so that we don't fry the guy at the other end of the Invisible Death Ray) isn't going to dissipate, we're going to need a conductivity of maybe 10^7 (Ohm-m)^-1. (like a metal) Conductivity is approximately n*q^2*t/m, where n is the charge carrier density, q is the charge of the carriers, t is the relaxation time (about 1.5ns; that's the decay time for the 2p state of Hydrogen) and m is the carrier mass. (About the electron mass, since air is an insulator) This means we're going to need a charge carrier density of about 2*10^23 per cubic meter, or a total of about 2*10^18 ions. Air is mostly nitrogen, which has a first ionization energy of 1400 kJ/mol, so the total amount of energy the laser would have to deliver is about 5 Joules. It would have to deliver this in about 10 microseconds (the time for light to travel the ten meters from the guy with the gun to the poor schmuck on the other end) so we need powers on the order of a megawatt for ten microseconds.
(End of calculation part) So practically? 5J in 10us is well above the level that can damage the eyeball even from indirect exposure. (Class IV) If the beam is UV, that makes it worse rather than better - the eye can absorb invisible light less than visible, and you can't see if you're accidentally going to zap yourself with it. So unless this calculation is off by a lot (several orders of magnitude) then I'm not sure how this beam isn't going to be a lot more dangerous than the makers intend. I'm getting kinda suspicious of their claims.
Considering the UK's record at shipping this sort of stuff out to dodgy regimes I would be quite worried.