It’d be impressive if they fire it at like half the speed of light
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)
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 have a dollar store laser pointer than can also travel at the speed of light
The laser pointer can travel the light of speed? If you turn it on, does the laser not come out of the laser pointer?
The laser and the laser pointer are both traveling away from each other at the speed of light, so from the pointer’s perspective the laser is traveling at twice the speed of light.
You are being downvoted as if your point was offensive or harmful. You are wrong, but it’s totally counter intuitive and I think this is a mistake that everyone makes when studying introductory physics. This would be correct for anything moving at relatively low speeds. But when you’re talking about light, or anything that goes so fast that “percentage of the speed of light” starts being a useful unit to describe their speed, this concept starts being a bit weirder.
This is actually the basic principle of Einstein’s theory of relativity: the speed of light (in a vacuum) is the same for all observers, regardless of their frame of reference. That means that if the laser pointer emits a laser, the light is moving away from the pointer at the speed of light. If the pointer itself is moving at a speed reeeeeally close to the speed of light… Then the laser will STILL be traveling away from the pointer at the speed of light. And if you, an observer in a frame, see the pointer moving at near the speed of light emit a laser… The laser that the laser emitted is also traveling at the speed of light from your point of view.
And there’s no wordplay here. I don’t mean that it’s light, so of course any speed it travels at is the speed of light. I mean that if you measure its speed from any reference frame, you will get around 300000000 m/s, or around 671 million miles per hour. No matter if you are also traveling at near light speed.
That’s impressive. Having a non-photon mass traveling at the speed of light would break our understanding of physics. Get that laser pointer to the lab ASAP
The army trembling when I bring a mirror
I have wifi router that emits microwaves at the speed of light.
Pffft, I have a microwave that emits microwaves at microwave speeds to microwave things.
Elections are slower than light waves so technically you have a slow, shitty router, but at least it can electrocute people so that’s something.
This is why I support the Empire. In a dictatorship there’s no waiting for elections.
Impressive. The future is awesome! Can we maybe apply this to regular light too? Maybe even green light? Or purple? I’m so excited.
Well, for the green light we already have FTL tech, it was invented and perfected by the car behind you as you are waiting for the light to turn green.
