In John Ringo's Troy Rising series, a system-wide array of mirrors is used to concentrate a fraction of solar output onto a single point, thus vaporizing entire ships. As conceived in the novels, this violates the physics of optical systems. However, if the sunlight were used to excite a sufficient quantity of lasing medium [specifically "a two-layer ceramic disk known as a Neodymium and Chromium co-doped YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet)"], you could potentially get such an effect. Given the incredible heat build-up involved, you'd need an ammo-belt of such disks.

On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 9:40 PM Kurt Feltenberger <xxxxxx@thepaw.org> wrote:

I was re-reading a book (WarWorld: The Fall Of Sauron) today and the
Saurons deployed what could only be described as a system sized meson
gun. There were two particle accelerator arrays on airless worlds (it
is implied that there were hundreds/thousands of tens of km long
accelerators) that fired neutral particles at a fixed point in space
where when the particles collided mesons were formed. This sounds
similar to the description of meson guns (TTA and other sources) and I
was wondering if anything like this would be possible. I seem to
remember the "Lab Ship From Hell" that was posted almost (or more) than
20 years ago that had a several km long accelerator tunnel that fired a
PA beam several AU, so at least it appears this is possible.

Thoughts?

--
Kurt Feltenberger
xxxxxx@thepaw.org/xxxxxx@yahoo.com
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not living enough." - Me

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