/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.12720083]

Could a laser beam be so intense that it would be able to carry a small object?

[Multimorph No.12720088]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
>The Starshot concept envisions launching a "mothership" carrying about a thousand tiny spacecraft (on the scale of centimeters) to a high-altitude Earth orbit for deployment. A phased array of ground-based lasers would then focus a light beam on the crafts' sails to accelerate them one by one to the target speed within 10 minutes, with an average acceleration on the order of 100 km/s2 (10,000 ɡ), and an illumination energy on the order of 1 TJ delivered to each sail. A preliminary sail model is suggested to have a surface area of 4 m × 4 m.[19][20] An October 2017 presentation of the Starshot system model[21][22] examined circular sails and finds that the beam director capital cost is minimized by having a sail diameter of 5 meters.

[Anonymous No.12720117]

What if instead of a beam we just sent one really large photon?

[Anonymous No.12720294]

>>12720083
No idea, but I know really powerful ones can ionize the air so you can use laser lights to carry an electric current. I know ita not what you asked for, but its interesting and thought you might like it.

[Anonymous No.12720666]

>>12720083
Laser beams have been proposed for particle accelerators, the protons are pushed by radiation pressure and as they approach the speed of light the redshift makes the pusher less and less effective. They are shit for scientific research, can only reach a few MeV.

[Anonymous No.12720714]

>>12720083
no.
Photons have no mass. Ergo you cannot use it in conjunction with knowns laws of motion. You can heat something with a laser and expel that substance, but photons themselves cannot carry or propel anything.
>but muh solar sails
Pseud science momentum is mass times velocity.
The only demonstrations that this concept even works is in on earth "vacuum" chambers. Whats that? Its a fucking Crookes radiometer not a solar "sail" capturing photons for momentum.

[Anonymous No.12720735]