"Aardvark" wrote in message
...


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in666290.shtml


I was going to stay out of this thread, but that picture is so stupid it
almost made me puke. The graphics d###-head that put that one together is so
far off it would make a middle-school student laugh.
The first clue is the beam following the curvature of the fuselage.
Coherent beams will reflect, but they damn sure will NOT diffract on that
kind of surface. Below the fuselage, there is an apparent separation of the
beam which would only happen if the fuselage occluded the beam going up the
other side. In which casse it couldn't paint the ridiculous stripe up the
compound curves of the near side.
My personal expertise comes from working on weapons applicable lasers for
the Navy and Marine Corps. Neodinium-YAG and CO2 were my specialties,
although my studies included a host of others.
I've also visited the weapons laser labs at White Sands, New Mexico and a
few other places. I've witnessed the destruction of rocket motors and
drones. The equipment used for that might fit in a railroad boxcar.
I have taken the beam from a 5mW neon laser directly into the eye, but
only for a brief moment, a split second, from a range of ten-feet. The
corneal retintivity spot lasted about fifteen seconds.

The only good thing coming out of all this crap is a deflection of
attention from GA.

So, what would I do if I was being illuminated by one of these
off-the-shelf gadgets? To be on the safe side, I wouldn't look in the
direction of the beam's origin. Peripheral exposure, scattered exposure will
not do any damage. If I were really scared, I'd execute a turn away.