Lasers are awesome. Two examples:

This video shows US Missile Defense Agency’s successful shoot-down of a liquid fuelled ballistic missile with a multi-megawatt chemical laser aboard a Boeing 747. The system is pure simplicity: First, the aircraft acquires the target. It then fires a low-power laser to test and compensate for atmospheric conditions. Finally, the team fires the giant chemical laser at the boosting missile, heating it until it explodes.

Most scientists are pretty sceptical of missile defence. Once fast-moving warheads are in space, they are tough to intercept, and decoys can easily fool even the best systems. But boost-phase intercepting, while the warhead is still attached to a big, slow-moving rocket, is much easier. Not everyone’s convinced it’ll work though: a 2003 report on missile defence by the American Physical Society suggested that the airborne laser could be foiled by spinning missiles (which would disperse its heat) or by adding an extra layer of insulation to the rocket.

Now onto laser awesomeness number two:

Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Microsoft’s chief technology officer, has developed a way to blow mosquitoes out of the sky using a laser he bought off eBay. The system uses a low-power laser to identify and track the mosquito then fires a higher-power laser to fry it. Sound familiar? It should. The lab that built the laser apparently employs several veterans of the US missile defence programme.

One important difference in the two technologies is the cost. Myhrvold claims his laser bug-zapper could cost as little as US$50. The Air Force laser has cost around $4 billion so far.

Let’s summarize: Lasers=awesome.

Credit: DOD, Intellectual Ventures