this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Laser Beams Deflected Off of Nothing but Air for First Time Ever in Breakthrough Patent Pending Process - The Debrief::An international team of scientists report that they have successfully used acoustics to deflect laser beams in an engineering first.

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[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Space battles would be so much cooler if every now and then the phaser gets split around the ship instead of hitting the shields.

Would also work even when shields are down.

[–] LinuxSBC@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

But that needs air. There's no air in space.

[–] CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

There's an Air and Space Museum

[–] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Doesn't need to be air "in space", there just needs to be air somewhere between the laser weapon and whatever it is you don't want the weapon to destroy...

... although it'd probably be easier to use a mirror. Maybe one pointing directly at the person holding a laser weapon. ;-)

[–] brianorca@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Corner reflector. Send it back where it came from, without knowing where they are ahead of time.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Damn... you're right.

Maybe they'll find another way now that they've found one.

[–] LinuxSBC@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago

A mirror? Light won't reflect off of nothing. The closest you'll get is gravitational lensing, but that requires about a galaxy's worth of mass to make any noticeable difference.