Caseck Posted August 7, 2006 Share Posted August 7, 2006 Whatever it takes... I'm more curious about ION beams... So what we have here is a beam of IONS... Hydrogen Ions I'd assume. Sounds a lot like a plasma gun. Not really a laser at all, which is of course, a beam or concentrated pulse of coherent photons... Both would be affected by atmospheric beam divergence and attenuation, except of course Lasers in a vaccuum. (Which are, as we know, invisible in a vaccuum because of no side-scattered photons.) Plasma/Ion beams actually will have a natural beam divergence unlike lasers, because it's superheated and highly charged material. Now, a plasma gun would require a magenetic bottle to superheat hydrogen into a plasma state. (Where the electrons fly off, and you end up with a bunch of protons and neutrons in a very excited state...) Of course, if you set several powerful enough ION beams together, you could generate a stream of superheated helium (a Fusion beam...) Anyway, the net positive charge on an ION or Plasma beam is the interesting point. It is possible to build an ionized shield or armour to deflect such a beam. (Lasers of course, wouldn't be affected by this at all, but you can tailor ablative armour towards Lasers, the composition of which would depend largely on the frequency of the laser...) Food for thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Imperial Grunt Posted August 8, 2006 Share Posted August 8, 2006 I am still waiting for my phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B0nes Posted August 9, 2006 Share Posted August 9, 2006 Hey! Just what you see pal! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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