No idea where to post this but http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-06/armys-laser-guided-lightning-weapon-delivers-high-voltage-through-air
Think this somehow polishes the imagination of some future weapon for those who always search for possible ways how such weapons could even work.
I don t see any refferens to the charged and plasma rifle.
I found this on the site :
!science
What do you mean by reference? Of course they didn’t base it off of Cata’s charge rifle. But that’s a possible way plasma rifles and the charge rifle could work. Science.
Explain how that relates to those weapons?
Shown is a weapon hat guides a bolt of lightning through the plasma trail left by a powerfull laser.
By reference i mean a reference :O. Theres no reference to the workings of a plasma or charged rifle whatsoever. If i missed it pls explain.
Lighting = plasma.
It’s a way how the charged rifle and plasma gun could work if they were real. I don’t see how one could not see the correlation between the article’s prototype and our science fiction guns .
Oh and chain lightning would probably work this way, too.
The primary dmg of that weapon is its electricity. A lightning may produce plasma due to heating the surrounding air. Lightning = electricity (that may produce super heated air and such). Its not a plasma weapon as in using the plasma as damage source. The plasma guides the electricity in this case.
So you wouldn t differentiate between a electric weapon and a plasma weapon? Meaning our shocker zs are throwing plasma?
That makes sense for a change.
Nope. A lightning is indeed plasma. Lightning isn’t just electricity rather a visible result of it. And since the carge rilfe can be aimed, the laser guidance can be a possible explanation. The lightning/plasma is a bright visualisation of the process. The channel created by the laser has lower resistance than the air around and “guides” the electricity that, to use your words: does the primary dmg, to the target.
The plasma rifles use hydrogen I just noticed so probably I was wrong with those. But only because they use another manifestation of plasma.
Okay so your saying a lightningbolt is a manifestation of plasma. As in a lot of electrons forming something like a cloud? Well its still following the laws of electricity like they follow the path of least resistence to earth.The plasma weapon essentially fires a bullet like mass of plasma so it doesn t apear like a lightning bolt. And how does it relate to the charged rifle then?
The essense of what i was saying is:
This report you linked doesn t explain how the ingame weapons work at all. Do you disagree on that?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics) see “common plasmas” and scroll down to the table.
Better seen here under “Vorkommen” http://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(Physik)
(I suppose to remember that you’re german so yeah)
Too difficult to type it all out with only my phone so please see the sources. Everyone interested will understand.
The hydrogen plasma rifle works different. I already posted above. But there’s no better explanation for the NX charge rifle so far so yeah, disagreed there.
I read the whole thing shortly after we started this discussion. I concede on the lightning beeing plasma part. You are right there.
Lasers of sufficient intensity can also cause an explosion of sorts at the point of impact, simply by heating it up so much and so fast that it can’t do anything else but “explode”. It kinda goes against the depiction of laser weapons cauterizing wounds, it’d probably be like a powerful firecracker going off, and said firecracker is part of the target itself.
I read something about the us trying to utilize this as sort of a “stun” non leathal weapon.
interesting… does the receiving material have an effect on that? Like is there a different reaction between wood/plastic/iron/human skin?
I think the “common” laser weapons just lack intensity to make the target explode but simply heat the target up. There’s a german electronics fanatic on youtube who builds (and sells) laser and coil guns. His lasers even carve letters into wood and make balloons pop.
Technically it’s that lasers of insufficient intensity cause explosions. You shoot laser at a human. The laser heats up the water in the skin of the human. The water becomes gaseous inside the human’s flesh. The gas must escape. BOOOOM! The human has a fist sized hole in his stomach.
Lasers of sufficient intensity will just burn through a human, and his friend behind him. And his friend behind him. And the wall. And the dog behind the wall. And the tree behind the wall and the dog.
Also, as far as I know, “realistic” plasma weapons would basically be high-tech flamethrowers. The kind of flamethrower you use to burn an heavily armoured tank. Think of meltaguns in Warhammer 40,000. Plasma is really hard to guide/contain, and if you find a way to guide/contain it, you’re probably better off using that power on a laser or railgun.
[quote=“Rookie, post:14, topic:8251”]interesting… does the receiving material have an effect on that? Like is there a different reaction between wood/plastic/iron/human skin?
I think the “common” laser weapons just lack intensity to make the target explode but simply heat the target up. There’s a german electronics fanatic on youtube who builds (and sells) laser and coil guns. His lasers even carve letters into wood and make balloons pop.[/quote]
I have seen concentrated light burn through thick steel in seconds.Still not strong enough to make it explode. So I asume it needs a rather Powerfull pulse for an explosion.
Thats closer to the games depictions yes.
Only organic material with lots of water in it can explode. Well, I imagine that any material with a liquid in it similar to water would explode when fired upon it with a laser.
Your wrong .
Everything sufficiently heated over a short ammount of time will explode. Be it gas liquid or a solid object. Or are you saying Objects with liquid in them are the current limit for our up to date lasers?
As far as I know, the explosions caused by lasers isn’t because heating something causes an explosion, it’s because the heating causes gasses to form inside the object being heated. Gasses are bigger than liquids and solids, so the object being heated explodes.
That’s how it was explained to me at least. I don’t see how shooting a laser at a sheet of steel is going to make it explode. It’s steel. Unless there’s something in there that can violently expand as a gas, I don’t see how it can explode.
[quote=“Muaddib, post:19, topic:8251”]As far as I know, the explosions caused by lasers isn’t because heating something causes an explosion, it’s because the heating causes gasses to form inside the object being heated. Gasses are bigger than liquids and solids, so the object being heated explodes.
That’s how it was explained to me at least. I don’t see how shooting a laser at a sheet of steel is going to make it explode. It’s steel. Unless there’s something in there that can violently expand as a gas, I don’t see how it can explode.[/quote]
Thats the point. If you heat steel enough it will change from solid to gas and violently explode. Steel gas 