superlasers
Okay, the Navy’s been in the news this week and last. First, it was bad news — the firing of another CO. Then, we got a (small) taste of the good news as a boat from USS Laboon took out a pirate skiff in the Gulf of Aden on Monday. Then, it was more bad news — a sailor tragically fell from her destroyer and was lost at sea.
But today — oh, today. Scientific breakthrough. Superlasers.
Wired’s “Danger Room” has the scoop:
But now the Navy thinks it’s broken a power threshold. Tests in December of a new injector yielded the electrons necessary to get the Free Electron Laser up to “megawatt class” beams, the Office of Naval Research said in a statement issued today, nine months ahead of schedule. One of the project’s lead researchers, Dinh Nguyen, said in the statement that he hoped to “set a world record for the average current of electrons.”
I don’t even know what that means, but I’m damned excited about it. They’re expecting these…ahem…carrier-killer-killers…to be in shipboard tests by 2018. Too cool. I guess it really finally is the 21st century.
