The article is from the November 22, 1976 issue of the St. Petersburg Times newspaper. According to the article, in 1975, Russia took out two U.S. satellites with a high-powered laser beam. Scary, huh? Especially the part about "hunter-killer satellites" and "death rays!" Well, those predictions that the magazine made were pretty wild. To my knowledge, we don't have "death rays" even today. The only thing that comes close is the Boeing laser from Weaponizing Lasers.
This is a perfect representation of what journalists will say to get their story heard (and an interesting look into past journalism too). The blinding of the satellite really boiled down to some burning (similar to the video in Weaponizing Lasers) on the satellites sensors or transmitters. The image that comes to mind when reading the article, however, is that the laser completely annihilated the satellite! I mean, the laser beam was "10,000 times as strong as a natural blaze!" Wouldn't that be like an explosion, if a natural blaze is taken to be a small flame? An excerpt from the Nov. 22, 1976 issue from the Milwaukee Journal said that the beam could "vaporize metal and produce destructive shockwaves."
Wouldn't the reader get a sense of fear from this article, especially back in 1976, when the average man's understanding of lasers was not at all like what it is today. People could not do a quick Google search back then to see how far lasers have come. All they could do is imagine an evil Russian scientist sending a laser into space and killing every American that went outside!
I just found this interesting science communication about lasers from the seventies. Pretty far-out, huh?
So, do you still feel as critical of this after your following post? Are these death-rays-type technologies always going to be deferred, like cold fusion? Or do you see them actually become real in the coming decades?
ReplyDeleteWell there is a lot of effort to make lasers more powerful and more compact. I can't speculate about where the technology will go, but I don't doubt that the military has given up on Star Wars. The article is from the 70's, and a lot of predictions from the 70's were wrong. Where are the flying cars? Where are the functional fusion reactors? There are definitely efforts to get there, but I don't think we are quite there yet. We might be there soon though. Watch out!
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