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FrozenGate by Avery

A possible lightning gun

Uranium said:
Actually, if it's inside a hollow toroid, it' completely safe.

YouTube - MythBusters - Water Stun Gun
Click to expand...

I know, but how will you power the laser modual??? You'll have to have a battery and wireless control over it's operation. There is no way you'll be able to insulate power or signal wires to the laser without shorting out the TC.

Technically, yes, one can sit on and interact with a TC's output but that doesn't mean it's a static free environment. Diodes are very susceptible to damage by static electricity. However, on paper it might work. If the diode case will be at 100kv and the diode + was at 100,003v, then technically it will work. I'll have to try it.

I'll put one of my many cheapo red lasers on my TC and let er rip, and see what happens. haha!

-Tony
 





Xplorer877 said:
I know, but how will you power the laser modual??? You'll have to have a battery and wireless control over it's operation. There is no way you'll be able to insulate power or signal wires to the laser without shorting out the TC.

Technically, yes, one can sit on and interact with a TC's output but that doesn't mean it's a static free environment. Diodes are very susceptible to damage by static electricity. However, on paper it might work. If the diode case will be at 100kv and the diode + was at 100,003v, then technically it will work. I'll have to try it.

I'll put one of my many cheapo red lasers on my TC and let er rip, and see what happens. haha!

-Tony
Click to expand...


big an avid builder of TCs, I'm going to bet that you kill your laser the second you turn the tesla coil on, and not because of the DC charges present on the toroid, it'll be because of the magnetic fields from the primary inducing a charge in the diode or the cap in the driver that will kill it.

You also need a LOT more power to conduct any charge through the air like you want, and I believe the threshold is 5Joules, which is 1000s of time more power than any 5.6mm - 9mm diode laser can do. BIG diode arrays yes, possibly.
 
I believe the DOD is probably working on something like this lol. I remember reading about it somewhere. Theoretically it could work, I think the trickiest part would be getting the current to flow down the ionized beam of air without damaging your laser. Getting enough power shouldn't be a problem for todays lasers.
Very cool
 
Uranium said:
Let's say you get an ultraviolet laser, and widen the beam to about 1cm. Since it's UVB, it will ionize the air in it's path. Now let's say you take a tesla coil, and attach the neutral end of the secondary to the ground. Then take the toroid-end, and introduce the electricity into the beam. If the ground is moist, you could shock things quite a distance away. Assuming the target is a person wearing rubber-soled shoes, capacitive coupling would still allow the HVAC current to flow.

Of course this wouldn't be very portable, requiring a maybe 3' box, but it is a nice concept. Ideally you could use it with an aiming device as a sentry.

opinions?
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I had a customer once ask me to see if a 405nm LD would ionize air. The simplest way to test is to place your DMM leads on either side of the beam but not touching and see if there is a reading in ohms. I tried this to no avail.

I have a freakishly low nm PHR that is closer to UV than most LD's ive handled. I will have to test with my DSO and see if there is anything there.

I was going to try something along these lines sometime back, I figured to pass 2 separate beams through short metal tubes with the + on 1 and - on the other... Or maybe try with the HV leads passing through a very thin wire that is positioned in the center of each beam.

Even if the results were minor, it would still make for an interesting experiment.
 
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There is no doubt in my mind that it could be created with an extraordinarily powerful very short wave laser combined with a massive source of high voltage/current. The only problem that I can see is that the amount of short wave laser energy needed, would make the high voltage arc unnecessary as part of the weapon. I mean the UV laser would vaporize the target, without the need for the electric arc/plasma. It would be the ultimate "burner". :)
 
^I agree.

Furthermore, unless it's intended to be used as a "stun gun" for humans, HV streamer really don't cause much damage to structural frameworks. Only TC streamers that are of a very high frequency >1000kHz are "fiery" and are able to "burn" things they strike. I suppose such a weapon could be used to destroy electrical equipment or computer circuity, but I doubt the government will be willing to invest in such technology when the army already has much cheaper ways to destroy things.

-Tony
 
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Not really possible with a tesla coil. Once you start exceeding the length of the streamers themselves, most of the electricity is already dissipated through the air as corona.

On my little tesla coil, even a 50cm length of wire will bring the spark length from 40cm to a mere 5cm.
 
That's because a typical coil's frequency is so high. If it could be rectified and smoothed that may not be a problem.

Another possible idea is to charge up some capacitors. If two lasers were sent to the target, with each one passing over the cap's terminals... That would be deadly. A 100kv cap could go right through the thickest clothes.

Of course to prevent frying the laser, they would both be completely electrically isolated from each other with teflon and earth ground. Just passing the beam through a window would completely isolate it.

High powered excimer lasers?
 
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If you widened the beam, you would no longer be sending out UV. And in any case you're not sending out electrons. How do you suppose you electrify photons? Sorry if I've missed a point here.
 
The idea is to ionize the air using a laser, then send high voltage down the ionized channels. Exactly what lightning does, except it ionizes it's own channels through stupidly high voltages.

However, you aren't going to get a laser than can ionize air in handheld, or even backpack for amy time soon, especially not a whole channel. It's easy enough to get 1 little dot of plasma in the focal point, but having the whole beam ionizing will take a heck of a lot of power. You wouldn't need electricity at that point, the laser would burn right through your target.
 
If I'm holding a lightning gun and I establish a plasma arc path, would not the arc current also pass through me to ground? I did that ONCE with my plasma cutter and no ground connection -- It got my attention.

HMike
 
On a completely unrelated topic, should we be cautious pointing lasers at clouds during a lightning storm? >.<
:scared:
 
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