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By what year do you think we'll have a fully working hand held laser weapon ?

It's really true that one man can't invent something beneficial without another man turning it into a weapon for hurting people.

We can't really say that we don't now.

Hand held is a bit of a stretch.. but the military have mounted lasers on ships etc. as defence mechanisms. So maybe in the future there will be hand held laser weapons... all though I doubt they will be anything like you see in the movies.

On the discovery channel, there is a show called future weapons. They are already testing future technology such as firing a laser at a nuke and disengaging it or making it explode in the air. Hand held lasers? Im not sure about those.

a frikin lazer beam

*starts singing*

Dynamite with a laser beam...



Sorry

When power becomes free and much more available at much less cost, then hand-held weapons that use a lot of energy will become available. That is quite a feat to perform though.

Originally posted by Ladyluck
*starts singing*

Dynamite with a laser beam...



Sorry

Guaranteed to blow your mind

making the laser itself is easy...the problem is making a power source small enough to fit in a hand device yet powerful enough to produce the gigawatts of energy needed

stop humping the laser. Maybe you and the laser should go get a freakin room.

I wish 2007.

http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?dsid=2222&dekey=Directed-energy+weapon

Originally posted by Bloigen
Guaranteed to blow your mind anytiiiime

A handgun?.Hell,they already shoot out of my eyes when i'm pissed off..lol

Couple of points...
1. The hand-held weapon is not going to fire a continuous beam powerful enough to melt tank armor or vaporize people. It will fire a single, invisible pulse of energy--perhaps delivering a few hundred kilojoules of power in a tiny fraction of a second--and then need to recharge.
2. We already have hand-held lasers which do fire beams. Their purpose is to help aim a weapon or blind the enemy.
3. Lasers are not inherently more powerful than projectile weapons. Energy is energy, whether it is the electromagnetic burn of a laser pulse, or the kinetic impact of a bullet, which also can deliver a few hundred kilojoules of energy.

Star Trek is Not around the corner, not by a longshot.

probably in a couple of years