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FrozenGate by Avery

What power will allow a visible beam?

diachi said:
Man, I knew you had to be a Zappa fan. I imagine you have quite the taste, we'll need to share some music some time. :D
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Having been a musician most of my life, there is little music I haven't heard or am not familiar with. Yeah, Frank Zappa was pushing the bounds of what was acceptable in the late 60s and 70s. He had a wit that was unmatched among his peers. If you have any of the original vinyl records from back then, keep them in good shape. You likely won't get another chance to get any. :whistle:
 





Visibility also depends on the viewing angle, and what your local air is made up of. It would be interesting to see a visibility comparison in various clean air compositions, clean meaning no visible fog or dust.

I wonder how visible a laser would be in space? I wonder if you can have such an energy dense beam that the light scatters itself? I know my 250mw red laser stops where the atmosphere ends, but it can be very hard to see sometimes when the air is very clean.
 
That the beam appears to stop in midair is an illusion. It continues on even though it appears to stop.
 
Nutball said:
Visibility also depends on the viewing angle, and what your local air is made up of. It would be interesting to see a visibility comparison in various clean air compositions, clean meaning no visible fog or dust.

I wonder how visible a laser would be in space? I wonder if you can have such an energy dense beam that the light scatters itself? I know my 250mw red laser stops where the atmosphere ends, but it can be very hard to see sometimes when the air is very clean.
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You might see at the very most some flashes if a photon bounced off a bit of matter. Generally photons don't interact but sometimes they do.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics
 
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I know it keeps going, I just meant the air has a big effect, but my beam is too dim to tell if it would be very visible in space. It would be so cool to see your beam stretch way out to the other stars
 
You can find answers to questions like this by searching for them. Do a google search for a 4 kW fiber optic cutting laser. It will have the answers to most of what you don't know. And, what the first search doesn't answer the next one will. You will learn much more this way than having someone hand you a simple answer.
 
In space the only time you can see the beam is either a movie of if it finds a dust cloud. No particle to scatter no beam. Maybe a spot on space junk
 
but you might be able to see the beam then as your blood and skin vaporizes and makes a particle cloud.
 
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Encap said:
:crackup: so funny RB.

That reminds me of what the Snake said to Eve in the Garden of Eden ~ " You can scream as loud as you want, but nobody's gonna hearrrrr... ya" :crackup:
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Not even the snake....
lol.gif
 
Since fog makes a laser beam more visible I am wondering about the effect of humidity on how visible a laser beam is.
 
Not as much as you might think. Fog puts water particles into the air while humidity is water molecules which don't cause visible light to be refracted off of them to anywhere near the degree of water droplets. If it doesn't refract ordinary light, it won't refract laser light either. If the humidity condenses into fog, then you will have what you need to show a laser's beam brightly.
 
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