Synthmilk
The United Peoples of Synth
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Posted - 2012.06.25 00:37:00 -
[1] - Quote
David Toviyah wrote:Simon Heirmonious wrote:Better questions would be why Lasers dont have infinite range. That would actually be a worse question since the reason is relatively simple: Dispersion.
So what is dispersing the beam in Spaaaaaaaaace? Also I believe the term you were looking for is divergence.
Space is a vacuum, not 100%, but close enough that for our purposes it might as well be. This means that a photon will continue on a straight course at constant speed and energy as there is nothing to act on it. In short, there is nothing to disperse a laser beam in space.
Now divergence is a different beast, and basically is the tendency of a laser beam to get wider with distance, due to the relationship between the wavelength of the projected light and the diameter of the laser aperture (assuming the parts of the laser emitter are not faulty). This means it's impossible to get a 100% straight laser beam, where all photons are leaving the aperture in parallel.
So as we can't get a properly parallel beam, we will want to focus it onto the target so that we know 100% of the photons are hitting the target. The focus diameter is determined by the distance, wavelength and aperture diameter. For a weapon, we want the focus diameter to be as small as possible.
So if we ignore all the nitty-gritty math, we have an excuse for why EVE lasers have the ranges they do: The size of the laser emitters means each wavelength will have a different maximum focus range, beyond which the focal diameter will only grow larger, and thus the energy of the laser will be spread over a larger area, and not inflict as much damage. The higher energy wavelengths of light will have the shortest ranges as their minimum focal diameter will be closer, and the larger the diameter of the laser emitter, the longer the ranges can be for any given wavelength. The larger diameter weapons can also focus more raw energy regardless of wavelength, due to a complicated explanation having to do with how much energy a square inch of optical material can handle and bigger weapons having more surface area to pass energy through.
And that's why lasers don't have infinite range, why bigger lasers have longer ranges, and why bigger lasers are more powerful. |