Stellar LASER from hell....

[sbrothy]

This is pretty out there so bear with me. Imagine a brunch of aliens having gravity under fine-grained control. So much so, in fact, that they'd bend space around a star so all the light would be forced around to exit from a circular aperture.No Loss. Furthermore they could bend space in front of the resulting beam in a series of prisms, perhaps even enclose it all in a gravitational LASER tube conveniently trapping some useful nebular gas, in effect creating a chemistry laser.

Such a "device" is probably overkill for most purposes and a Nicholl-Dyson beam would probably look like a flashligt in comparison.

Would anything in the observable universe be safe from such an over-top-weapon?

I'm not much of a writer but it'd be cool (and a little chilling) to read a description of such a weapon being build viewed from a planet in the crosshairs. :)

Any scifi story with a weapon like that in it?

 

[sbrothy]

This is pretty out there so bear with me. Imagine a brunch of aliens having gravity under fine-grained control. So much so, in fact, that they'd bend space around a star so all the light would be forced around to exit from a circular aperture.No Loss. Furthermore they could bend space in front of the resulting beam in a series of prisms, perhaps even enclose it all in a gravitational LASER tube conveniently trapping some useful nebular gas, in effect creating a chemistry laser.

Such a "device" is probably overkill for most purposes and a Nicholl-Dyson beam would probably look like a flashligt in comparison.

Would anything in the observable universe be safe from such an over-top-weapon?

I'm not much of a writer but it'd be cool (and a little chilling) to read a description of such a weapon being build viewed from a planet in the crosshairs. :)

Any scifi story with a weapon like that in it?

Using this technique they could also use a supernova to pump an x-ray laser...

 

[Drakkith]

Would anything in the observable universe be safe from such an over-top-weapon?

The Sun puts out something on the order of 3.8x10^26 watts. The Earth only receives about 1.73x10^14 watts of that. So it would be 12 orders of magnitude more energy than the Earth receives every second. Or, in other words, it would be the equivalent of Earth having a trillion Suns.

I don't think anything short of a black hole would survive for long.

 

[sbrothy]

And I'd be focusable because of gravity-prisms in front.

EDIT: You could light ssomeones cigarette with the thing. :)

 

[Drakkith]

You could light ssomeones cigarette with the thing. :)

I'm not sure if 'disassociate into its fundamental particles' counts as lighting.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

 

[sbrothy]

I just now noticed that I wrote a "brunch" of aliens. I hop they have the right chirality, and more to the point I hope they're yummy.

 

[sbrothy]

BTW this forum sports a gem. In a little surprised this short story got no further but it'definitely worth a read:

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/the-short-story-thread-post-yours-here.914630/post-5762250

 

[sbrothy]

Perhaps because because it was part of an assignment but stager things has happened. Just think of films like THX1138.

 

[Bystander]

Any scifi story with a weapon like that in it?

Ringworld, and its sequels.

 

[Vanadium 50]

a "brunch" of aliens

It's a cookbook!

 

[glappkaeft]

This is not dissimilar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nicoll#Nicoll-Dyson_Laser

 

[sbrothy]

This is not dissimilar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Nicoll#Nicoll-Dyson_Laser

Yeah that's why i explicitly mentioned it. Still theyre talking about using a phased array but if you control gravity to, admittedly, cartoonsish levels there'd be none of those pesky thermodynamic laws. Just light following nullvectors (is that a word and more to the point did I use it correctly)...

I know it's way way out there but the problem is one of engineering (or at least one could hope so), as oppssed to unobtanium.

 

[sbrothy]

Now I come to think about it it woud be way to overkill (in more than once sense) If you had that kinda control over gravity you'd propably just

It's a cookbook!

Soylent Green. :)

 

[Mike S.]

You're thinking very small here. The Sun puts out a puny 4E26 watts according to that other poster, but it weighs 2E30 kilograms. Multiply that by (3E8 m/s)^2, and now you're talking power. Your gravity control is enough to turn light from a star around 180 degrees, which is to say, you have event horizon capability. Now you just have to herd little chunks of Sun into micro event horizons every yoctosecond, which decay out into Hawking radiation, and thereby (allegedly) you can convert matter into pure energy without needing the antiparticle. Controlling the geometry of how those horizons form should allow you to collimate the light. If anybody wants to hassle you over whether that light is coherent, they're welcome to stand in the beam and take pictures.

 

[sbrothy]

You're thinking very small here. The Sun puts out a puny 4E26 watts according to that other poster, but it weighs 2E30 kilograms. Multiply that by (3E8 m/s)^2, and now you're talking power. Your gravity control is enough to turn light from a star around 180 degrees, which is to say, you have event horizon capability. Now you just have to herd little chunks of Sun into micro event horizons every yoctosecond, which decay out into Hawking radiation, and thereby (allegedly) you can convert matter into pure energy without needing the antiparticle. Controlling the geometry of how those horizons form should allow you to collimate the light. If anybody wants to hassle you over whether that light is coherent, they're welcome to stand in the beam and take pictures.

"[...] you just have to [...]". Well, I guess I started the speculating myself. :)

 

[Klystron]

On a much smaller scale Project Orion designers postulated using nuclear explosions to power a 'grazer' gamma ray 'laser' effect each time the impulse drive fired in space. I forget how they proposed to lens and lase.

Rumor around the Test Site back in the 1970's mentioned using an underground test detonation to power a one-shot grazer or x-ray laser. OP might find some declassified reports or relevant articles.

Many SF authors have featured this idea including Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. See "Footfall".

Guess if one can control the output of an entire star, a grazer seems small potatoes.

 

[MikeeMiracle]

Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

Quote from the Martian in the Buggs Bunny cartoon if I recall correctly as the Earth obstructs his view of Venus? Damn that dug up some old memories... :)

 

[sbrothy]

Quote from the Martian in the Buggs Bunny cartoon if I recall correctly as the Earth obstructs his view of Venus? Damn that dug up some old memories... :)

Oh wow. That reference went completely over my head. :)