A Laser works by taking a group of like particles (usually a gas) and exciting them up to an energy level usually several notches above their standard ground state. I'm not sure what they do to excite the particles, but I believe that it is usually accomplished by using another light source or electric fields. Particles being naturally lazy then promptly drop back down to their ground state emitting a photon of a particular wavelength (this being governed by the type of gas and to what energy level it had been excited too). What makes a laser unique is that most of the particles are working in tandem, which allows a unified wave front being of course the "kick" of the laser.
I have never heard however of a laser that was strong enough to destroy anything at a distance. Is this another star wars program that is doomed to failure because no one bothered to sit back and seriously look at the physics? (Though I have heard that that program was a dummy to get the soviets to bankrupt themselves trying to do the same thing when we knew there was no way it would work)
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A Laser works by taking a group of like particles (usually a gas) and exciting them up to an energy level usually several notches above their standard ground state. I'm not sure what they do to excite the particles, but I believe that it is usually accomplished by using another light source or electric fields. Particles being naturally lazy then promptly drop back down to their ground state emitting a photon of a particular wavelength (this being governed by the type of gas and to what energy level it had been excited too). What makes a laser unique is that most of the particles are working in tandem, which allows a unified wave front being of course the "kick" of the laser. I have never heard however of a laser that was strong enough to destroy anything at a distance. Is this another star wars program that is doomed to failure because no one bothered to sit back and seriously look at the physics? (Though I have heard that that program was a dummy to get the soviets to bankrupt themselves trying to do the same thing when we knew there was no way it would work)