Just want to chime in that pulsed lasers don't just exist because of electrical restrictions, they have many interesting properties, uses, and advantages compared to CW lasers. For example, in laser cutting, a sufficiently fast pulsed laser will dump energy into the material so quickly that the heat does not have time to dissipate before the material vaporizes, giving a much cleaner cut.
@@marca9955 Lower peak output, so they heat up the material slower at the exact point of burn, or they have to be more powerful to achieve same output. They dump more energy into the material overall, but we don't want that, we want to burn exactly what we want to burn and touch nothing else. So the pulsed laser is more controlled, the CW is less, but allows faster cutting. There are pros and cons to each. Also depending on material, the pulsed laser also can allow the vaporized material to clear the cut before the laser dumps more heat into it, while the CW will dump some of the energy into the vapor cloud, resulting in absorption and scattering.
while I understand what you're saying, technically, the guys' statement is correct. If you had a cw laser with the same average power as a pulsed laser's peak power, than you would achieve the same thing if you gated the cw laser accordingly (which might be impossible electrically for high loads if it's >xMHz). Anyways, a 1MHz 1ns pulsed laser with 1kW average power has 1MW peak power. If you use that to process at 1m/s than you could achieve similar results if you processed using a 1MW cw laser at 1000m/s , just get a fast polygon scanner :P - well, obviously I'm aware of the thermal limitations in optical components and also power-density limits during most material processes. If you want higher peak powers/fluences however, you're out of luck. Imagine a 100kHz 1ps laser with 200W average power - one can get those off-the shelf too. That's 2GW peak power. Now we need a small rocket to match the power output, or two standard sized nuclear power plants... Not gonna happen. --> Pulsed lasers will win! regards - a laser physicist.
It also allows time for some of the smoke to clear out of the way so as to not block the laser. A CW laser has to shine through the smoke generated while a pulsed one can be timed to limit the smoke interaction thus imparting more energy into the target
Just want to be clear, there’s a huge difference between FDA approved and FDA cleared. I have a degree in biomedical engineering, and it takes very little effort to get a medical device “FDA cleared”. It takes exponentially more to get something FDA Approved, which is what really means something.
@@astronautdyno3120 Seems like a lot of RU-vidrs succumb to the temptation of ad revenue, it is shame when money becomes more important than being critical and honest for the sake of your viewers.
that's because the device he's selling doesn't do anything but slightly tingle your face muscles into feeling a tiny bit softer. if it works at all it's like "hey skin, pretend i botoxed you for 5 minutes". guess he went from science to money communicator.
Imagine you being on the second floor and your mom being on the first and her hitting the ceiling with the handle of a broom every morning at 5:00 a.m. don’t tell me shit about waking up. That’s the worst way on the planet.
The chemical storage was only a small factor for the decommissioning of the Boeing YAL-1. Testing showed that the atmosphere had too much of an affect on the powerful laser, causing it to lose a significant amount of energy due to heat and light scattering. While they initially billeted the laser as being able to operate from hundreds of kilometers away from its target, after testing it was shown the actual effective range was not nearly as long as they had hoped. They would basically have to fly into hostile airspace to get a chance to shoot their targets long enough to destroy them, which defeated the purpose of a standoff ABMS. As of yet, there is no effective way to destroy an ICBM during its first phase of the launch because they are extremely fast and positioned very far inland in most nations that have them. Most efforts nowadays are into stopping them during the second phase (the ~15 minutes while they are freefalling in space) or the third phase (the ~2 minutes of terminal velocity before airburst of the warhead). As of right now, the big huge chemical laser of the YAL-1 will probably remain unused, unless we decide to put those things in space, lol
Yes, it struck me as odd that an organisation that routinely carries massive amounts of explosives should shy away from a few (admittedly reactive) chemicals.
I don't think it would operate in space either. Every laser has a divergence, which is in a range of a few degrees. They are very focused from close but become huge beam at a distance. Even with lower then one degree divergance in few hunred km distance the laser beam would be still around a kilometer wide.
@@Neo-vz8nh I have a feeling that if their testing concluded the atmosphere is the factor causing it to lose its effective range, I would trust their word and assume it would work fine in space. These are engineers we're talking about - they probably had the laser's divergence in mind when calculating the original effective range
I was really surprised how hard I had to look to find someone saying this. That shit looked fishy as fuck. Credibility matters when you're trying to teach people.
@@G0rgarcut him some slack paying bills is honestly more important. And the people who come here often are educated enough to understand that he did the marketing out of desperation and not because he actually endorses it.
Great video. One nerdy thing: The Death Star did use pulses. My brother and I had a longstanding argument about this because we're very mature people. The remaster shows it as clear as day - There's a targeting laser but pulses are what destroys Alderaan.
You can handwave that pulsed lasers are more effective because they give the material burned off the surface time to drift away. Otherwise the clouds of material can obscure the remaining undamaged surface.
High power continuous lasers suffer from a problem called 'blooming', where the energy in the laser beam ionizes the air and causes a spreading lensing effect that defocuses the energy of the laser at distance. It's part of the reason why most modern laser weapons are pulsed power and not continuous. They get their shots off so fast that the air doesn't have time to ionize before the energy has been put into the target.
The Death Star primary weapon is not a laser though it does use lasers for aiming. It is a directed energy weapon that uses a form of beam energy that suppresses the nuclear Strong Force, causing atoms to fly apart with the same energy release as thermonuclear fusion reactions. ALL the matter the beam contacts reacts in this manner., which explains the destructive consequences of even a light strike.
Hopefully you had the right cartridge for your mask. But even wearing a mask, chlorine gas absorbs through the skin too and that mask wasn't a full cowl or even a full face mask, so it can be exceptionally dangerous. Best to do it outside if at all.
That cartridge looks like the right kind, a multi gas (including organic vapors) cartridge. I doubt he was wearing a respirator for the first test, in the beaker. His voice is way to clear. As he doesn't talk for the test with the chlorine spread out on the mat I can't tell if he was wearing one then or not.
Kyle Hill did a (as always) hilarious video analyzing the death star laser, determining that it would destroy the deathstar and everyone in it with hundreds of G of recoil.
He did? Then I assume he made a math error, since the recoil would be the least of their problems :-) Even at 99.99% efficiency, the laser would produce enough waste heat to instantly turn the Death Star into an expanding cloud of plasma at around 20000K. They should vaporize before they could feel any recoil.
@@wernerviehhauser94 "Even at 99.99% efficiency, the laser would produce enough waste heat to instantly turn the Death Star into an expanding cloud of plasma at around 20000K" They use the same tech that they use to energize the ridiculously dense power packs used in blasters and thermal detonators to store the waste heat until it can be dissipated safely over time via a stream of high-energy ions. As long as the exhaust port remains clear during the years-long dissipation process, they should be fine. (hat tip to Irregular Webcomic ofc)
I really love your videos which is why I was so disappointed when you partnered with a scam wellness company. I don't care if you aren't making money on your videos, no science channel should ever promote wellness scams.
That bear device reeks of non returnable scam to me ! There is so little online info and reviews to be extremely wary . Its also effectively a 250 quid tens machine and is a scam on price alone . 20% off is still a ripoff .
Please be a little more selective in the ads you run. These beauty products all just feel like scam products (regardless of they are or aren't) and they just make your vids seem less trustworthy.
"can definitely tell the difference on my skin, giving it a more chiseled look" "it's two outermost electrons are in different orbitals and have the same spin" one statement earns him money, the other earns him respect.
This guy was respected at some point? "This actually producing chlorine gas, so you should be careful". There's not even a fume hood, this guy is a joke that's going to get dumb kids killed while he makes money selling bogus products.
eh, I used to be annoyed with channels advertising certain products like this if they were super cheesy and/or obviously bs, but ya gotta remember they're just trying to earn money off their work like anyone else. i'm betting this company is giving him a good chunk of money to advertise their nonsense product. at least YT hasn't come up with an evil way to prevent users from skipping past in video ads (yet)
I remember trying to alert you of this awesome singlet oxygen red glow effect but never got a response, I'm glad to see you experiment with this cool phenomenon!! 👍👍
You bring up a very good point. A plane with one if these, using fighter jets to protect it, would be able to very quickly clear an area of enemy aircraft. They may not be good for super long distances, but a few hundred miles might be in their range of effectiveness. Great point.
Would have liked to hear about singlet oxygen's disinfectant properties. Our own immune system makes small amounts of singlet oxygen as well as other reactive oxygen compounds/radicals (and even hypochlorite) to attempt to kill invaders.
@@kennethmiyasaki Indeed -- I found 2 articles on this with a cursory Google search, although they both say that the wavelength of the light thus emitted is 1270 nm, which is in the infrared -- detectable with the right instruments, but not by our eyes.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio We used a "luminometer" (we also measured dissolved O2 uptake with a potentiometer and oxygen electrode)... many moons ago!). 🙂 We used various enzymes/dyes to measure other forms of reduced oxygen (superoxide/hydrogen peroxide/HOCl). It was not my main interest, but it was kind of a necessary thing to measure. I was interested in neutrophil myeloperoxidase and later, non-oxidative antimicrobial mechanisms.
Where I work we had a Trumpf laser cutter that had a 1.8kw CW square folded gas laser. When it started to show its age, we bought a Salvagnini cutter that had a fibre laser of 4Kw power. We were told not to use both at the same time but the suits ignited the warnings. All of a sudden, the lights literally went bang, and we’d blown three 250A fuses and the t” cabling in the street, which had to be replaced. Office staff swarmed out of their cubicles in panic, coffee going cold, and I was summoned to turn the whole building off and change the fuses. The inefficiency and power that lasers use is no joke!
@@SoulDelSol Fictionally. But we do see a head-on shot of a bolt when Leia is stunned and it appears to be toroidal in shape, which is a plausibly stable way for "bolt" of energy to propagate. (Bubbles under water often form as rings and you will occasionally see smoke rings produced by factory smokestacks, etc.)
0:10 starwars is science fantasy not science fiction. these 2 are different genres. for anyone who does not know: science fantasy is when things that are impossible become pausible (anti-gravity, teleportation, size change etc). science fiction is when things that are plausible become possible (genetically modified lifeforms that have been modified through crispr, brain implants that allow mind reading, general ai etc).
OK now I'm curious. Is a plasma bolt just the electrons off of an atom 'bottled up and shot in a stream" whereas laser is a stream of protons, or electromagnetic radiation? Yours is the comment making me think at 3 am lol
Lasers emit a stream of photons, not protons (although, other particles may also be present). Plasma is an ionized substance that has been charged (electrified). The ions in the air become charged during a lightning strike and generate very bright plasma, for example.
thank you @@benb8075 that helps. so, a photon is a particle or 'chunk' of light i.e. electromagnetic energy with no charge, where as a proton is a positively charged subatomic particle. So blasters shot photon bolts?
It's funny how the laser project worked but was decommissioned because of "dangerous chemicals". As opposed to B-2's and B-52's carrying fissile heavy metals to make everyone feel safer.
Fissile heavy metals don’t explode when exposed to air melting everything around them. Even angry glowing rocks need to be sufficiently provoked before you get a big boom. Otherwise it’s just a little poof and you launch a manhole cover into space.
0:14: Showing the Tesla Bot as reference for robotics in modern times is like showing a bronze sword as the pinnacle of swordsmanship to blacksmiths that worked with steel for their whole career..
Thanks for the idea! I make a simmilar reaction as in one of our lectures and therefore I need a quite complicated setup. This is much easier! Have to try it if I can use this too!
This is the most amazing chemical reaction you’ve ever shown on this channel. Holy s***!!!!! It’s scary to think what a one megawatt laser could do when just a couple watt laser with a small focus lights things on fire from across the room 😅 Also small correction: ultra high power electric laser diodes I believe are usually pulsed to maximize the average power output with the diode’s duty cycle capability in mind. Delivering thousands of watts continuously isn’t an issue. By pulsing the incoming signal, the diode can emit a higher average power level than if it was running continuous duty, and the peaks will be hotter upon contact with the material the laser is cutting optimizing the performance even more. There are actually laser diodes that pump out thousands of watts continuous duty now (mostly infrared ones in the 1100nm range). Backyard scientist had a 2kW cleaning laser on his channel and that thing is literally a deadly weapon 😅
I was involved in some of the potential basing studies for the YAL-1 if it were ever to be deployed. No joke, the considerations on the ground for the chemical farm were pretty serious. And the aircraft itself was a flying toxic chemical storage facility. It would work, but mitigating the risk from the chemicals involved was problematic.
6:10 Now that's a debatable topic... Some people say it's because it "underperformed" Others would assert that it was just underreported - but was "decommissioned" because sudden development of techs like this upset the nuclear balance, and we could have a secret fleet of these, or something similar.
That would make sense if the laser airplane was the only way to deal with ICBM's....but it's not. All major countries on earth (and several minor ones thanks to their meddling) possess defense systems capable of striking down nuclear strikes
@@asd-wd5bj THAAD is only really effective when placed very close to the launch site as it can only kill effectively in the boost phase (so can sm6), Sm3 is not effective against full size icbms, there are some American missiles which can kill icbms in the glide/reentry stage but they only exist in tiny numbers and are prohibitively expensive. You would also need 3/4 of them to knock out a single ICBM reliably. Almost all of the (working) ABM systems in the world are American, and even the existence of these systems which at worst could be overwhelmed by kim jong un, created huge issues in the nuclear balance and treaty structures were built around it. The public existence of the YAL 1 would have broken this balance.
A laser works by exciting a medium like a gas or a crystal with "normal" light or high voltage,or heat. Then to the left and to the right of this medium there will be a mirrow. One of them is semitransparent. So i think this light coming from the reaction is used to excite the medium. Then when this medium is excited some atoms in it will de-excite by coincidence and release a photon. This photon then bounces back and forth between the mirrow, and by this hits other atoms in the medium, which then get de-exited by this photon, and thus release another photon with same frequency and same polarisation and same phase. So then two photons bounce back and forth, then four, then eight, ... . Then due to the fact that one mirrow is semitransparent, with some probability a photon will pass. These passing photons then make up the laser beam, which is very directional, coherent (same phase) and polarized and with high intensity.
@@neutronenstern. The light created by the chemical reaction is the laser. It's not used to excite anything. It gets collected by mirrors and passed through lenses to direct it onto the target.
@@kmoecub Great, now I wonder why it emits 2 diff wavelenght 762nm and 634nm and if this count as "monochromatic" when technically it emits in 2 different frequency ?
@@CraftyF0X Monochrome also means that it (could be) is a value of one colour as well, so depending on the definition you use, it could mean that as well :)
@@kmoecub LASER means Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. I think you should stop and reread the encyclopedia section about lasers. If you don't leverage excited states then emission is probably not gonna deserve to be called stimulated but just spontaneous. The benefit of excited medium and stimulated emission is that the light is coherent, the exciting beam and the emitted beam go parallel at the get-go. The method with mirrors and lenses does not allow creating a straight beam of the laser kind, from a spontaneously emitted light (that travels in all the random directions). Try it. There was an Action Lab video about it too.
"All's you'd need is a tracking system, and a large spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space." - Real Genius, such an underrated movie
It's not pulsed. That would be like saying that naval artillary is a fully automatic weapon, but it takes minutes to chamber the projectile instead of miliseconds.
The only way the 'laser' on the Death Star could have had such destructive force (in-universe, or otherwise), would be if it was 'pulsed' in quantum wavelengths; functioning as a 'disruptor' more than a 'laser', basically. Disruptors exist in-universe, and even 'laser guns' in Star Wars are not a laser beam weapon, they're a laser-excited 'packetized' energy-projectile DEW.
I just thought I'd point out that Star Wars uses blasters, not lasers, in most the scenes people reference. Blaster is a charged particle beam, basically a lightning gun. They do have laser technologies, but these are often employed in vacuums where blasters either don't work or aren't effective. If you doubt me go ahead and rewatch the movie. Then read up on what a blaster is.
Science is impressive and extremly fascinating and salute to guys like u who actually explain each concept while doing it in practicle . I love ur way of explaining and just everthing...❤❤
The reason all the pilots for the F35 were getting sick was because the Onboard Oxygen Generating System (OBOGS) was operating too hot. The OBOGS draws from the engines, and instead of pulling oxygen out of the atmosphere, it was cracking the oxygen molecules into singlet oxygen. It ate the filters, and the pilots ended up breathing the filter material, along with singlet oxygen, doing serious damage to their lungs. They had to re-engineer the entire OBOGS system to make it run cooler.
You might like reading up the lore for laser weapons in the battletech/MechWarrior universe. Chemical lasers were used prior to better power supplies (IE Fusion reactors)
Can you imagine a ground based facility with a system like that? Like the old WWII beachfront bunkers, but with a gigantic multistory chemically driven continuous laser
Sounds like an excellent target to get a hypersonic missile strike on. Wouldn't even need much in the way of explosives to cause a shitload of damage for free, you'd just need to breach the containment structure conveniently located right next to the weapon you want to disable.
@@sylvrwolflol Eh "hypersonic missiles" are such an overrated wunderwaffe first made by the US in the 1950's, not as well as people make them out to be. Stuff has been able to shoot them down for ages.
Are we seeing the dynamic range of the camera color sensor failing to acquire the red, or is it that the intensity at that monochromatic range is simply too great for the sensor? Given the lack of automatic exposure compensation, I'm going with the former case. However, it's possible the camera was set at static exposure. Interesting technical for a camera operator and camera designer. I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
Spent the first few minutes of the video terribly confused as, 'singlet' is what we call sleeveless undershirts here in Aotearoa/ New Zealand (and Australia). They're mostly worn by hard working men instead of T shirts. I've smelled a few of them so, l was completely prepared to believe they were capable of producing something scary! The red light at the end completely made up for my confusion though. 😊
High power lasers use a pulsed design because it's more effective at delivering the full power of the laser into the target material; a continuous laser will lose a lot of energy going through the plume of recently vaporized material, so a pulsed design just saves power by giving the vapor time to clear.
That, and continuous lasers suffer from atmospheric blooming where they ionize the air in the beam, which causes it to spread and dissipate at high powers and useful distances. You either have to make your beam bigger (lower W/m^3) like YAL-1 tried to, stay on target longer (not ideal for ICBMs), or pulse real fast to avoid the problem.
Some constructive criticism: Your not using a proper gas mask (It doesn't cover your entire face, also the filters and mask look like a Particle filter, are you sure this is a GAS mask?) and aren't using a fume hood or doing the experiment outside. Chlorine gas is toxic and extremely toxic corrosive towards almost anything, aka: you, your pets, your walls, the water- and power line in your walls, your eyes. This was extremely bad practice, even with your warning notification, as such a notification does not protect yourself and it also understates what a terrible idea it is to produce large amounts of chlorine gas in an enclosed room with no proper PPE. Please don’t take this comment the wrong way, the video was really interesting, I just want to offer some constructive criticism. Please stay safe :)
Wouldn't be the internet without some good ole concern trolling. You have no idea what the layout of the room was, how good the ventilation was, or how much he did at once. He's not dead so I'd say he did just fine.
@@bhc1892 Fr lmfao. First of all that looks like a multi gas cartridge, not a particulate filter (just because you see a mesh doesn't mean it's particulate, multi gas cartridges have the same pattern, e.g. 6006, and also in the first place organic vapor cartridges are magenta/purple) and he's posted pictures of his setup on Instagram before and it looks just fine.
@@bhc1892 He's not trolling. Why are you so defensive about it. Something doesn't have to kill you to be bad. The worst part is that he is setting a bad example to viewers who may be intrigued to repeat this.
In the novel I'm working on, most portable laser weapons used in space are powered by condensed magazines of this stuff. The chlorine gas byproduct can also be vented to act as a chemical weapon in enclosed biospheres.
I follow quite a few of he big Science / STEM channels on RU-vid and they are great 👍🏼 But theres something about The Action Lab that is ‘so cool’ that I think I enjoy you the most 😊 Keep on keeping on Action Lab guy 😃
Chemical lasers are equally as interesting since they tend to be chemically venomous by themselves separately, yet when you combine the substances together, they react violently, to the point they give up a lot of light that can then be selectively amplified. It's just attractive to the military because it means they don't have to drag the nuclear power plant across the road (considering the fact that diesel fuel is a precious commodity nowadays, especially with the price - it all adds up quickly). Yet for shorter laser wavelength, electric lasers are best for that because of energy required to obtain UV and X-ray laser, while chemical lasers are much more efficient in the Infrared and red bands.
@@MirlitronOne It's more of a figure of speech, some chemicals involved in generation of laser light are just as dangerous - like the Halogens in general, in this case Chlorine.
That is not, in fact, possible. I wish it was but it isn't. The stuff is so angry that it will react with anything, including itself, to stabilize, either by oxidizing something around it, or by oxidizing other singlet oxygen to create O2 the stuff we breath.
I just made a small batch last week. Used it while it was still hot. The volumetric flask I was cleaning had a chunk of something I didn't notice. Boom. Acid cannon.
This is a great video, but I'm a little disappointed in your sponsor this week. You're an ambassador for critical thinking and the scientific process, making content that is well researched and founded. Snake-oil beauty products that have no medical or scientific backing feels a little....not right. I'm glad you're getting sponsors, I think you totally deserve it, you make awesome content, but I hate to see you hawking something over-priced beauty crap that "gives you chiseled skin."
I'm not advoating for snake-oil, but did you read any of the studies he cited? Did you take a moment to consider that the product may actually do what it claims to do, at least to some degree? I'm not critical of your stance (in fact I agree with it), but to comment without checking things out is as bad as selling snake oil IMO.
@@kmoecub I have seen way too many beauty products in my lifetime to take any of this nonsense seriously. If somebody that actually figured out something that made you look younger, it would be literally everywhere. We're talking electrode belts and laser masks here... They all have "scientific studies" that support them, and yet they always die off in oblivion because they don't actually work. Cherry-picking information, mayfacuters running their own strides, manipulating statistics to sell products is all standard fare and is not the same as legitimate scientific or medical backing.
just a sci-fi nerd quickly clarifying something. the "laser" the death star uses isn't just a laser. its a FORCE amplified super weapon. it uses massive kyber crystals as amplifiers. its not just the "energy" that destroys the planet, its the force itself too. a laser can never destroy a planet in an explosion like that (vaporise? theoretically yes with a powerful enough one but not explode). the force is the more significant factor in this context, acting like a massive force push from inside the planet. see Starkiller's (the character, not the base) AoE foce attack for a toned down example. the laser just bores a hole to the core where the force "bomb" detonates. do remember, in starwars its not "sci-fi", its "fantasy sci-fi". space wizards are a thing in their universe; as is "magic".
What if we mixed it with a fusion reactor that lights up for a split second so that max energy for a second might actually light that up for steady fusion
That’s why the death star was the size of the moon so it could carry the large amount of chemicals to power the laser and that’s why one shot into the exhaust manifold thing blew it up because of all the reactive chemicals enclosed.
1:10 This is only true for the slower pulsed lasers. Most pulsed lasers these days continuously pump the gain medium, and it’s that medium that needs time to recharge so it can amplify the seed pulse when it comes around
Action Lab, this makes me think of another case of chemical light: FIREFLY!. Can we make a laser beam out of a bug?. No I don't want to weaponize insects ☮️
