Wapsi Square Forum

Dave wrote:

Sideromelane wrote:Did she dump enough energy in to make sandstone laze? Because there might be some questions about a beam of radiation knocking out satellites from the ground if she did.

How much energy would that even take?!

Not sure that's even possible, under the circumstances. Creating a laser, in a relatively small space, requires some form of reflective cavity within which the energetically-excited gas (liquid, crystal, or plasma) is confined. Without a parallel pair of mirrors, there will be no opportunity for the photon packet to bounce back and forth, building up strength each time and then "leaking" out through one mirror in the form of a (near-)parallel beam. Even tiny semiconductor lasers (e.g. CD and DVD-player laser diodes) have two polished parallel surfaces to create the necessary back-and-forth.

You can generate some amount of coherent energy in an open "cloud" of plasma (e.g. a natural maser) but it won't beam - it will tend to radiate outwards in all directions and will be subject to the inverse-square law.

So, a sensitive satellite might have detected a flash from Castela's vaporization of the rock (assuming that the "mini World Grid" containment field didn't block the light pulse), but I doubt very much as if there would have been enough energy hitting the satellite to even "blind" a highly-sensitive sensor for a moment, let alone knocking out the whole satellite.

Now, if she were to pick up a laser tube (with mirrors, intended to be pulsed via a flashtube) and then ZOT its innards like she did the rock... it might be able to emit quite an impressive laser pulse. Dunno if the laser would survive for more than one use, though. If she blew apart a chunk of sandstone so easily, a fused-quartz tube and/or ruby crystal might not hold together for more than a millisecond.