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Scientists explore killer lasers and particle-beam weapons...
Imagine a nuclear-tipped missile rising from a silo deep inside the Soviet Union, fixed on a target in the U.S. Almost immediately its fiery exhaust plumes trip warning sensors in satellites orbiting overhead. One of those satellites sends a powerful beam of light, or perhaps even a cascade of subatomic particles, bursting down from the heavens like a Jovian lightning bolt. The beam homes in on the ascending missile and fastens onto its nose cone. Burning through, the beam turns the electronic guidance system into silicon mush, sending the missile wobbling off course and totally immobilizing its nuclear warhead...
...Soviets fire off other missiles. But again and again, the killer beam appears almost miraculously out of the skies, destroying one rocket after another. The Kremlin is so frustrated that it calls off its multimegaton attack...
What makes these weapons so attractive to strategic planners, at least in theory, is that their "bullets" travel many times faster than even the highest-velocity conventional rockets. In the case of lasers, which send off beams of highly concentrated light of a single frequency (or color), the speed is that of Light itself, about 186,000 miles per second. That means the beam arrives at its target literally in a flash. If a missile were traveling at, say, six times the speed of sound (4,400 m.p.h. at sea level), it would have moved only nine feet before...
...Because beam weapons are largely unaffected by the tug of gravity, they could be aimed straighter than the proverbial arrow. In space, laser beams would have almost infinite range, as NASA showed when it bounced laser light off small mirrors left behind by the Apollo astronauts on the moon. (At lower altitudes, laser beams, like any light, are readily diffused by clouds and even fog.) Charged particles, on the other hand, would be influenced by the effects of the earth's magnetic field. But researchers are working on machines that shoot particles with no electrical charge, like simple hydrogen...