[This came to [email removed], looks like it was meant for
[email removed]. Watch those automatic reply headers! -- James]
Adrian:
It's a nifty idea, but there's only one problem: the fiber-optic cable itself.
I'm primarily involved with quantum optics on the theoretical level, and my
practical lab experience with lasers isn't as much as what I have with, say,
magnetic steering and bottling, but I can guarantee this: the idea will only
work (and this is a pretty lame caveat, I admit) if the next seven or eight
Tech Levels beyond ours have some amazing breakthroughs in fiber-optic
technology. Here's my reasoning:
For the novices, fiber optics works by designing a material that refocusses
divergent light energy "gently" back onto its original path. What this means
is that the light beam arrives at its destination in essentially the same form
as it left its source, and there is very little loss along the way (which is
why US Sprint is making such a big hooha about using them). The problem is
that there's no such thing as a "loss-free" cable; if there's any
quantum-level interaction between lased photons and the atoms of the cable,
and there HAS to be for the cable to operate at all, there will be an energy
loss in the form of waste heat. Now, for most applications, such as
telecommunications etc., this loss will be minimal, perhaps even immeasurable.
But when we start talking about the levels of power communicated by a good-
sized battlefield laser, things become more complicated.
At this point, we have to consider the problem of laser weapons themselves.
They're the most dangerous non-nuclear weapons in the Traveller arsenal, and
everyone likes to have one around, but how do they really work? It's
impractical to merely shoot a hole through someone: the high heat causes
instant cauterization of the wound, and if vital organs are missed the victim
may not even feel much pain. The concept behind the laser's effectiveness
comes in heat transfer and tissue trauma: the water in human cell tissue is
enormously efficient at absorbing and dissipating heat energy from radiative
input on the visible wavelengths, so when a human body stops a laser pulse, a
chunk of flesh about the size of a golf ball at the point of contact instantly
flash-heats into steam, rupturing cell walls, causing potentially fatal organ
hyperthermia, and exploding outward in a sudden burst that may take a great
deal of unheated flesh with it. The results are properly graphic for fans of
special effects a la George Romero: a loud explosion and a burst of blood and
pink steam, with an action-reaction effect (since the exploding flesh acts
against the human body as a reaction mass) that can hurl the victim backward
as nicely as a high-velocity lead slug.
Lovely to look at, but how does this relate to fiber optics? Simple: If that
much energy is being output in a single impulse (to overload the body water's
ability to conduct heat away from the impact point swiftly enough to avoid a
steam-burst) down a fiber-optic cable, the cable will almost certainly melt
from the waste heat. The tradeoff between flexibility and sturdiness under
handling is a tricky one in fiber optics, and to the best of my knowledge no
one has yet tried to add extreme heat-impulse resistance into the equation. If
you shrug and say, "Well, at TL15 there'll be fibers that can handle it," then
your problem's solved. Or rather, it's just beginning, because a proliferation
of devices like this could make life difficult for both players and refs.
There are those who say that at high TL, personal lasers will be UV, X-ray, or
even gamma-ray devices. This is bull: unless you're trying to kill a guy with
radiation, these weapons are far more effective on inert metal objects than
they are on humans. The problem, again, is the radiative-heat absorption
properties of water. Water is dynamite at absorbing heat (hence cell damage)
from visible light, but is transparent at shorter wavelengths. So a shortwave
laser would pass through a human, causing severe radiation sickness but no
immediate fatal trauma. (And fiber-optic cables can't work on UV or Xrays;
their wavelengths are on the subatomic level, so atomic structures can no
longer bend or shape them. That's what makes Xray telescopes so difficult to
design.) The Xray laser being worked on by the DOD these days, remember, is
for shooting down missiles: metal have very different absorption properties
than people, and more energy output per photon is possible with shorter
wavelengths.
Anyway, those are my feelings on the subject. I'd get a bit twitchy on the
idea of letting a box like this into my game; I had a similar design in an old
campaign, rigged to a pointer glove rather than a pistol for aiming, and the
people who were able to get them wreaked havoc.
Let me know what you decide to do.
metlay | HOW TO DIE YOUNG, #327:
Traveller Mailing List Historian|
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