Engineers create lightning gun

[Veho]

Lasers and lightning!​

Engineers at Picatinny Arsenal, the US Army's weapons research and development facility, have successfully tested their prototype lightning gun. Guided lightning gun. The device uses a short (two trillionths of a second) high energy (50 billion watts) laser pulse to ionize the air along the beam, creating a conductive channel of plasma. The channel then conducts an electric charge from a high voltage source (a taser on steroids) towards a target. Additionally, this highly increases the range of the electric discharge. The image above shows a directed bolt of lightning earthing itself through a car. Which is all kinds of cool.


I wonder if you could use two lasers, fire one at a storm cloud, the other at your target, and smite your enemy with actual lightning


Anywhoo, source here.


LAZORZ

 

[BORTZ]

All i can think of is a Tesla Trooper from Red Alert 2.

 

[Jamstruth]

That is pretty damned cool. Your idea for smiting with lightning wouldn't work though. The electricity travels along the beam so firing at a storm cloud would probably shock you really quickly.

Can't help but think that surely the laser would do more damage though

 

[nando]

i'm glad tax dollars are going towards stuff like this instead of education. keep it up US!

 

[AlanJohn]

i'm glad tax dollars are going towards stuff like this instead of education. keep it up US!

I kinda agree on you with that. But, this is fucking awesome anyways.

 

[Gahars]

I'm ready.

 

[Alex221]

I believe the guys over at matrix already did this

 

[Hop2089]

I can't wait to raid the armory housing this thing during an apocolpytic scenerio and take it for my own use .

 

[Veho]

That is pretty damned cool. Your idea for smiting with lightning wouldn't work though. The electricity travels along the beam so firing at a storm cloud would probably shock you really quickly.

Not if you fire the lasers simultaneously, cross the streams () and provide a lower resistance path for the lightning than your (heavily insulated) machinery. And wear rubber soled boots. And operate it remotely.

Can't help but think that surely the laser would do more damage though

The laser would have to fire continuously to damage anything vital, and I don't think the power source would withstand sustained fire. Also, the laser would probably melt. This way the laser only has to create a conduit for the electric charge to follow. You do more damage with less power.