Actually, c is the speed of light in a vacuum, but light travels slower through a medium, like air. So lasers shot through air will actually travel slower than c.
Yeah, but this requires that the light be travelling through a dense medium to slow down. It still speeds up again when travelling through air or vacuum
It’d be impressive if they fire it at like half the speed of light
I mean, any other non-c speed really.
Actually, c is the speed of light in a vacuum, but light travels slower through a medium, like air. So lasers shot through air will actually travel slower than c.
(For anyone curious, the speed of light in earth air is like 99.97% as fast as in vacuum)
Bunch of nerds in this thread.
You’re in science_memes what did you expected?
hot science girls
Where?
In your area
exactly where they should be.
Ya, but that’s JUST slow enough to be able to see it.
Maybe it’s going to be space lasers.
Do you know what the religious affiliation of these space lasers will be?
You have a lot of chutzpah to ask such a question. Oy! What would your mother say?
“You’re so skinny why are you not eating”
Flying Spaghetti Monster
rAmen
A laser strong enough to be used as a weapon will probably not leave a lot of medium on its path.
But the front-most part will still travel at less than c. It will just speed-up after a while.
I’m curious. What happens to the medium? Does it simply get pushed aside? Or pushed along? Or will it eat up some energy and react to something else?
Much like lightning, a powerful enough laser will ionize the air. That ionized air is hot and rises, just like the ionized gasses from combustion.
A powerful laser will look like a beam of fire.
I would be especially interested in speeds larger than c 🙂
Well that’s pretty easy, just fire it anywhere except a vacuum.
But I never use my vacuum. Might as well fire a laser at it!
Yes, ofc - but we’re talking about a weapon here, the air is implied as a medium, and the very-near-c with it.
But a weapon that would construct some sort of structure or a tunnel between it’s position and the target would be something else indeed.
Imagine if they made it fire so slow that you could just do a dark souls dodge roll to avoid it
Would you accept 10,000 times slower than the speed of light?
Yeah, but this requires that the light be travelling through a dense medium to slow down. It still speeds up again when travelling through air or vacuum
just shine a laser through a thing of zircon (n=index of refraction=1.923~2)
so speed of the laser in the zircon = c/n ~c/2
Then we could finally have Star Wars laser guns.
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