06-14-2019, 10:13 PM | #51 | |||
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The plutonium rich regions of Washington State
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Re: (Ultra Tech) How realistic are Electrolasers?
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The rules in Ultra-Tech for adverse weather don't seem particularly realistic. As for a blizzard or fog, what are you doing shooting at something you can't see? Quote:
A typical industrial power main will be about 500 V. Municipal power distribution lines run at about 11 kV. Long distance power transmission in the USA runs at about 110 kV. So if the beam connected to an industrial breaker box or exposed wiring, the channel would carry a current of 1.25 mA for 0.1 ms. Compare this to a Taser which delivers 1.9 mA currents for 0.1 ms. Electrical contact with a municipal power line would give you 27.5 mA for 0.1 ms. This would cause a painful shock. However, the threshold for lethal current is usually said to be around 100 mA, so the user would probably survive. Shooting a long distance power distribution line is another story. This produces a current of 275 mA, which could be lethal. Hopefully the electrolaser gun has surge protectors. EDIT - 275 mA can be lethal for currents applied over a second or two. For the 0.1 ms duration we have here, this is unlikely to kill. Note that these examples assume a 10 m range. At longer ranges, the current will be lower; at shorter ranges it will be higher. It also assumes no insulation from the gun itself, which would be a major safety violation. Since the gun is probably well insulated (to protect the user from electrical malfunctions from the gun, as per usual electrical equipment certification guidelines), all of these currents will be much lower. There is one last issue to consider. If you are shooting through a region where the electric field is near or above the threshold for cascade breakdown (plasma formation due to a runaway process where each electron gains enough energy between collisions with air molecules to knock further electrons off), but a spark has not yet been initiated due to a lack of seed charges, the ion channel the electrolaser creates could be just the thing to kick-start this process. This would lead to a highly conductive spark forming - and high conductivity leads to nearly constant voltage along the discharge such that the electric field is concentrated at the tip of the propagating spark and becomes more intense as the spark grows (you keep the same potential difference, but across less distance, so the field in V/m gets stronger). Consequently, under conditions of very high electric field an electrolaser shot might initialize a spark discharge back to the gun and its user. This is probably going to be an unusual situation, except in thunderstorms. On the other hand, you don't have to worry about ricochets or over-penetration. And even hitting the wrong target is not going to have all that severe of consequences. So this is something where firearms are more 'impractical' than electrolasers. Quote:
Luke Last edited by lwcamp; 06-14-2019 at 10:23 PM. |
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06-14-2019, 11:18 PM | #52 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: (Ultra Tech) How realistic are Electrolasers?
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06-15-2019, 12:37 AM | #53 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: (Ultra Tech) How realistic are Electrolasers?
People have experimented with laser triggered lightning, though it seems to generally be done with terawatt pulse lasers, not the more diffuse beams discussed in this thread.
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06-15-2019, 09:54 AM | #54 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: (Ultra Tech) How realistic are Electrolasers?
So in some "parallel reality", electrolasers are banned outright, because some unlucky sod fired one in a storm and got struck by lightning. And the ensuing public went with a paranoid overreaction like it often does.
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