And i'll call it a LAAAAAZER!!!

[Kaak]

http://www.oaklandtribune.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,82%257E1865%257E1709759,00.html

DOWN THIS tiled corridor, light does muscular, noisy work. Lasers dig dirt and weld metal. They pound aircraft parts into shape.

In Bob Yamamoto's lab, light devours.

He straps on emerald green goggles. A technician stabs a fire button and calls out the computer countdown. "Three ... two ... one ..."

Then ... nothing. Just a buzz of electronics and an ephemeral glow in this darkened room at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. But inside Yamamato's target chamber, a block of steel spits flame and molten metal.

In those two seconds, 400 blasts of light poured into slabs of clear, manmade garnet. Swollen in energy, the crystal's atoms then unleashed torrents of infrared light to ricochet 1,000 times between two mirrors and multiply, finally escaping as 400 pulses of pure, square beam.

Kilowatt for kilogram, this is

the world's most powerful solid-state laser. Its invisible beam drilled Yamamoto's inch-thick steel plate in two seconds. Add larger crystals and it will eat steel a mile or more away.

"What we're building," Yamamoto explains, "is a laser weapon."
........................

read the rest :-D Terrorists beware

[Asher]

What was the big energy cannon called in Starcraft? Wasn't it the Yamamoto Cannon or something?

[Nubclear]

Oh god, I hope this weapon doesnt get any further than it has.
OR
I hope some other nation steals this technology from us as well.

[DaShi]

I hope everyone has one. Then we can all experience it.

[Urban Ranger]

/me looks at it, gets bored, returns to where he came from

[DaShi]

'Bout time.

[CerberusIV]

And just how big is the power plant needed to make a practical laser weapon work?

[Paul Hanson]

From the sounds of it, about the same size as one required to power a large town.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
And just how big is the power plant needed to make a practical laser weapon work?

That's exactly why I got bored. You can't get that kind of a power plant to the battlefield.

We have had lasers that could bore through steel plates quickly for a long long time. That's not a problem. The problem are power source and coherency.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Asher
What was the big energy cannon called in Starcraft? Wasn't it the Yamamoto Cannon or something?

The Yamato gun

[Q Classic]

What was the big energy cannon called in Starcraft? Wasn't it the Yamamoto Cannon or something?

yamato gun (200), researched at the physics lab addon (50/50) to the terran science center(150/150) for the terran battlecruiser (400/300/6). reqs. 150 energy.

iirc about the prices. the energy cost is correct, as is where you get it.

[Wraith]

--"Wasn't it the Yamamoto Cannon or something?"

Yamato. After Space Battleship Yamato's Wave Motion cannon.
Guess this is the mark 1 version ^_^

--"From the sounds of it, about the same size as one required to power a large town."

The article mentions 100 kw is what they're after (with 25 by the end of the year). I'm assuming that's output power rather than input power, but with reasonable efficiency that's not bad at all. Certainly within range of what a ship-mounted point-defense weapon could be fed.

Wraith
How can I build a Death Ray if they won't let me have any busbars?

[Spiffor]

You're so Korean, Q3, knowing Starcraft by heart and all that

[Dr Strangelove]

Isn't the usual efficiency of a laser somewhere on the order of 1%?

[Q Classic]

You're so Korean, Q3, knowing Starcraft by heart and all that

actually, i'm a disgrace. i don't remember all the details by heart, and i can't do the rush worth squat. i think the yamato cannon does about 250-450 in damage if it doesn't kill something outright.

either way, this new laser's cool.
how big is that machine?