Navy Tests Ship Based Laser System

Below is a short video of the Laser Weapon System which the Navy temporarily installed aboard an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey built by Ingalls Shipbuilding..

 The laser is a technology demonstrator built by the Naval Sea Systems Command from commercial fiber solid state lasers. The unit is aimed by the MK 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon system of which the Aegis system is famous for.

The LaWS Close-In Weapon system uses the Solid State Laser (SSL) which can provide a ship with a quick reaction capability for defense against small boats and planes.

The LaWS weapon is still in its' prototype stage, however it is already showing its' merit as. This capability provides Navy ships a method for Sailors to easily defeat small boat threats and aerial targets without using bullets. (U.S. Navy video by Office of Naval Research/ Released)

The Office of Naval Research announced that they plan to deploy the system next year.

 From the Boing Boing article:

• "Our conservative data tells us a shot of directed energy costs under $1," Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder said. "Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to fire a missile, and you can begin to see the merits of this capability."

Wow, Star Stuff in the Lab!

You read right, scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, using the Linac Coherent Light Source - one of the most powerful X-Ray lasers on Earth have, as the article in Gizmodo writes:

• (have) made matter that you can only find in the heart of stars and giant planets.

In a recent experiment, scientists:

• fired the LCLS at a small cube of aluminum only 0.00039 inches on a side,  (creating)  a super-hot solid plasma burning at 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit.

Solid plasma Doesn't that just blow your mind! And 3.6 million degrees is hotter that the surface of the sun!  As the article points out, it only lasted one trillionth of a second and 3.6 million degrees is still far below the 14 million degrees at the center of our own sun.  But they are saying that this experiment alone goes a long way towards understanding how a star works.  

full article here plus link to SLAC

NASA Researching "Tractor Beam" Technology

NASA would like to have a "Tractor Beam". The problem is that no one has of yet ever built a tractor beam or even agreed on what constitutes a tractor beam. However a team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md have been experimenting with laser light to pick up and move particles into testing instrumentation which in the future might be mounted on spacecraft or rovers. The lasers would be much like a vacuum cleaner, focusing and transporting small particles to awaiting sensors. Initially it was thought that this tech would be used to clean up orbital debris, however the lasers are no where near powerful enough to move anything greater than near sub microscopic particles. In the film below, NASA demonstrates how they feel the system might operate in the future.

Real Life Tractor Beams!

Ok, before you start to fantasize about Star Trek gleaming beams able to pull huge ships from even more amazing distances, we are talking about something on a much smaller scale. Like microscopic small....at least until recently.

From the article:

• Researchers from the Australian National University have announced that they have built a device that can move small particles a meter and a half using only the power of light.

But lets put this in perspective. Up until recently, researchers could only move tiny particles over minuscule distances. By comparison, the power of A.N.U.'s device is thousands of times more powerful.

And how they accomplish this feat is in itself awe inspiring itself! A.N.U. starts with a hollow laser beam. Yes I said hollow. This hollow beam is focused around a glass bead. As the bead drifts closer to the walls of the laser, heat is produced forcing the bead back towards the center. The air in the darker center is also heated by the laser forcing the bead down the center of the beam. To force the bead back in the other direction, the team simply focuses another laser into the dark center in front of the bead, controlling it's x y and z axis and over much larger distances!

Read complete physorg article here

New Super Laser unveiled

Tim Sayell sends in this very interesting article from Yahoo News which reports that The National Ignition Facility has disclosed information describing a new "super laser". The new laser is capable of reaching temperatures and pressures equal to that said to exist in the cores of stars. This mean that for the first time in history, this was the first demonstration of fusion ignition in a laboratory setting.

What is really impressive is the physical makeup of the laser array. a house-sized sphere can focus 192 laser beams on a small point, generating temperatures and pressures that are capable of a fusion reaction triggered by the super laser hitting hydrogen atoms. There is ever indication that this reaction will produce more energy than was required to prompt "ignition," which had been the "holy grail" of fusion researchers for more than 50 years.

Read the complete article here

Could lasers zap away dangerous asteroids?

Space lasers that zap away rogue asteroids may still be in the realm of a video game. But researchers say the technique could one day be used to and deflect asteroids that could impact the Earth.

Previously, researchers have proposed several methods to save Earth from an asteroid impact. These include blowing it up with a nuclear bomb or putting a spacecraft beside it so the craft's gravity could tug the asteroid off course.

But these solutions have drawbacks – the smaller chunks of rock created in the nuclear explosion might still threaten Earth, and the 'gravity tug' would require a relatively massive spaceship with a lot of fuel.

Now, researchers say a lightweight, space-based laser could eliminate these problems gradually altering the trajectory of a threatening asteroid. Though the technology may take two decades or so to mature.

One of the great advantages of using lasers is that their beams remain relatively tightly focused over long distances, allowing them to study asteroids from farther away than is currently possible.

The laser could be fired in short pulses, focused on a centimetre-sized spot on the asteroid, they would repeatedly pulverise material, ejecting tiny bits of space rock at 10 kilometres per second. This would function as the asteroid's propellant, pushing it into a different orbit – and safely away from Earth.

submitted by Shaun Saunders