We’re talking about the woman who blows up her political opponents willy-nilly. I doubt she’ll be anything other than slightly miffed she didn’t get to push the button herself.
The laws of physics say “not gonna happen”. Let’s assume you could muster that kind of power from orbit, you’d just create very large glass craters on the surface wherever you pointed it, not just a red halo. Not least because you’d turn the atmosphere into plasma on the way down (like what happens in storms, but much, much worst). I suggest you run this one through Randal XKCD, he would probably be delighted to deliver a detailed silly but accurate science report.
Good points, thanks for commenting! I obviously didn’t make it clear enough, there are 2 very different lasers in use here, one is the red targeting laser which is constant-use and very low intensity, the other is the high energy laser that only lasts for 300 femtoseconds each shot. You’re right, it does turn the air into plasma similar to a lightning strike, that’s why we see a white line briefly when it fires… in fact the article I read about this proposed weapon stated that it turns the air into a self-propagating self-focusing lens of some kind, whatever that means 🙂
I thought it pretty clear that the first red light was the soft-focus “CLEAR THE AREA” beam. But maybe EMP needs to be spelt out as not everyone knows about electromagnetic pulses and might need the full words to look it up on Wikipedia. Though the effect on air-car was pretty clear!
I’m just waiting to see what a pulse designed to take out a buried missile silo is about to do to Lisa’s leg!
Also, it’s a graphic novel, not a physics textbook, so maybe best to gloss over the puddle of glass where the ground used to be. Next you’ll be telling us that Superman would explode if he flew into orbit.
Wikipedia already has many commonly used acronyms, like EMP. That’s how I know that the UBI mentioned a couple scenes back means universal basic income.
I don’t think Mom is going to tolerate Maddie’s EMP collateral damage. Time for an armor-piercing round right thru the forehead connector, methinks.
We’re talking about the woman who blows up her political opponents willy-nilly. I doubt she’ll be anything other than slightly miffed she didn’t get to push the button herself.
The laws of physics say “not gonna happen”. Let’s assume you could muster that kind of power from orbit, you’d just create very large glass craters on the surface wherever you pointed it, not just a red halo. Not least because you’d turn the atmosphere into plasma on the way down (like what happens in storms, but much, much worst). I suggest you run this one through Randal XKCD, he would probably be delighted to deliver a detailed silly but accurate science report.
Good points, thanks for commenting! I obviously didn’t make it clear enough, there are 2 very different lasers in use here, one is the red targeting laser which is constant-use and very low intensity, the other is the high energy laser that only lasts for 300 femtoseconds each shot. You’re right, it does turn the air into plasma similar to a lightning strike, that’s why we see a white line briefly when it fires… in fact the article I read about this proposed weapon stated that it turns the air into a self-propagating self-focusing lens of some kind, whatever that means 🙂
I thought it pretty clear that the first red light was the soft-focus “CLEAR THE AREA” beam. But maybe EMP needs to be spelt out as not everyone knows about electromagnetic pulses and might need the full words to look it up on Wikipedia. Though the effect on air-car was pretty clear!
I’m just waiting to see what a pulse designed to take out a buried missile silo is about to do to Lisa’s leg!
Also, it’s a graphic novel, not a physics textbook, so maybe best to gloss over the puddle of glass where the ground used to be. Next you’ll be telling us that Superman would explode if he flew into orbit.
Wikipedia already has many commonly used acronyms, like EMP. That’s how I know that the UBI mentioned a couple scenes back means universal basic income.