Melding Beam Weapons and Guns

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I had a powerful photographic flashgun that had slight, but detectable recoil. This was due to it heating up the air in front of its output window, but you'd get a similar effect with a powerful pulsed laser.

I suspect it would still have to be extremely powerful for this to occur, or be focused very close to the emitter. From what I understand, any sort of laser with decent range is rather unfocused at the emitter, but focuses down to a very small area on the target. You need a laser powerful enough that it seriously heats the air when unfocused, and something like that is going to be really powerful when it is focused.

Of course, I'm far from a physicist, so take the above with an appropriate quantity of salt.