Rayguns are cool

While I am still waiting for someone to invent the flying car that I was promised in the '60s, it looks like rayguns are coming every closer to delivery.

Off-the-shelf combinable fibre laser amplifiers are currently limited to 200 watts each, according to DARPA: and it wants to push this up to 1kW to start with, then to 3KW in the next phase. That would mean a Raytheon/Sandia style bundle would scale up to 100kW or even 300kW, well into the proper-deathray range. The DARPA chaps, though - perhaps upset by people calling them mad scientists - try to avoid talking about blaster guns too much.

I can't wait, although if we're having trouble as a society figuring out how to regulate a .22 cal pistol, I'd hate to see what happens if we ever get blasters that can vaporize a building.

-posted by Paul