Oolite Bulletins

zevans wrote:

Physics would have it that the violet lasers are more destructive than the red - so purple vs red is about right.

Physics would also have it that
- a white laser is impossible
- you couldn't see them in hard vacuum
- mil-spec would probably be X-ray wavelength and therefore invisible twice over

If I remember correctly from lectures at Uni (it has been some 16 years), but it is not the frequency of the light that makes the power of a laser. Yes violet photons hold about twice the energy of red photons but each is on the order of 2 x 10^-19 to 4 x 10^-19 Joules. This is tiny. It is the photon density that counts. As a result you can have low powered blue lasers that are used in Blu-Ray disc drives and powerful red lasers that can take missles out. If you use higher frequency light you can do more detailed stuff that's why they need blue lasers for the latest data storage (high frequency means smaller wavelength which in turn means smaller pits on the disc and hence more storage capacity per square cm). It used to be ultraviolet light was used to manufactuer microchips now it's X-rays.

Laser colour is about is about confining the harmonics of the principal frequency. The ones that are taught about in schools are the those that are confined to one frequency but they don't have to be. Laser won't produce light of frequencies in a continuum across the spectrum but in a series of single frequencies instead. If it has enough of these frequencies across the full visible range it will appear white. Just Google "white lasers" and you'll see that they exist.

You can't see lasers in a vacuum because they is nothing for the light to scatter off (well maybe a the few bits of dust or gas but it's so dim you wouldn't see it with the naked eye). Oolite and most science fiction doesn't care about that.

Phantor Gorth

It is the photon density that counts.

Surely when you're trying to terminate Thargoids with extreme prejudice then surely it's -energy- density that counts. So you'd need less blue photons than red photons, and therefore if you only have so much energy to put -in- to the laser, you're better producing blue because you can delivery more energy in the same time or area of space.

If you use higher frequency light you can do more detailed stuff

That's to do with wavelength itself and not the relationship with energy. You can only resolve about half a wavelength of detail IIRC.

Laser won't produce light of frequencies in a continuum across the spectrum but in a series of single frequencies instead. If it has enough of these frequencies across the full visible range it will appear white. Just Google "white lasers" and you'll see that they exist.

Oh yeah - hadn't thought of that - but possibly less energy-efficient to produce?

zevans wrote:

Surely when you're trying to terminate Thargoids with extreme prejudice then surely it's -energy- density that counts.

That was what I was getting at.

So you'd need less blue photons than red photons, and therefore if you only have so much energy to put -in- to the laser, you're better producing blue because you can delivery more energy in the same time or area of space.

If only it was that simple. It is usually harder to produce higher energy photons, but that is dependent on the technology used. There is little or no benefit in producing fewer higher energy photon over more lower energy one. Sometimes the reverse. For a laser weapon to work you need the target to be a good absorber of the frequency used. If you go two high or two low a frequency then the photons are less likely to be absorbed so the weapon is inefficient. A simple example is an X-ray beam as a weapon against people would not be very efficient as most of the X-ray photons would go straight through the person targeted. Ok you may give them cancer but that wouldn't be a very good weapon. What you want instead is a frequency that is absorbed and therefore burns. Visible or infrared is perfect for that.

That's to do with wavelength itself and not the relationship with energy. You can only resolve about half a wavelength of detail IIRC.

Yes I know this. That was to mention what was reason why different frequencies are used in technology and therefore not really total energy output related.

Oh yeah - hadn't thought of that - but possibly less energy-efficient to produce?

I wouldn't have thought so. In fact I would have thought at they would be more efficient as you are not trying to cut out the unwanted frequencies. Lasers naturally produce multiple frequencies so if you cut out unwanted frequencies it then depends on where the energy of the photons being cut out goes. Which I would hazard to guess is as heat in the laser equipment and not into the beam at the wanted frequency.

Phantor Gorth

mil-spec would probably be X-ray wavelength

I've always fancied that higher energy density could be achieved if a nuclear force that propagates according to the cube law (strong force?) could be seduced into adopting square law characteristics (quantum barrier manipulation?) and then focused, for example at a Thargoid menace. Perhaps the Benulobiweed creative ideas department could develop this into hardware

But a little closer to the topic is my recent experience of having a maintenance overhaul and then being offered another one within half-a-dozen non-combat jumps; do lower TL industrial economies only service the eqpt. they offer for sale? They charge the same!

I’ll take a guess and say that a maintenance overhaul is time related, and this varies according to the lengths of your jumps. I treat it like Station taxes – you gotta pay! I think they’re only available at high TL systems.

Zbond-Zbond wrote:

I've always fancied that higher energy density could be achieved if a nuclear force that propagates according to the cube law (strong force?) could be seduced into adopting square law characteristics (quantum barrier manipulation?) and then focused, for example at a Thargoid menace.

The nuclear force propagation is worse than inverse cubic it's inverse square times negative exponential. The inverse square bit is geometric but the negative exponential is caused by the force exchange particles (virtual pions in this case) having mass and therefore decay after a short period of time.

You can not "focus" a force as the nature of a force is a complicated interaction of particles and the Quantum fields associated with the force, but you can in theory create a beam of pions (or other mesons) and fire them at a target, after all this is not much different in principle to a laser which is a concentrated beam of photons and photons are the force exchange particle of the electromagnetic force. If the pions are accelerated to to relativistic speeds then time dilation effects get round the decay issue.

Phantor Gorth