Lasers! Everybody loves them, everybody wants them. But outside a few niche applications they have failed to live up to the destructive potential that Saturday morning cartoons taught us all to expect. In defiance of this failure, a company in China claims to have produced a “laser AK-47” that can burn targets in a fraction of a second from half a mile away. But skepticism is still warranted.
The weapon, dubbed the ZKZM-500, is described by the South China Morning Post as being about the size and weight of an ordinary assault rifle, but capable of firing hundreds of shots, each of which can cause “instant carbonization” of human skin.
“The pain will be beyond endurance,” added one of the researchers.
Now, there are a few red flags here. First is the simple fact that the weapon is only described and not demonstrated. Second is that what is described sounds incompatible with physics.
Laser weaponry capable of real harm has eluded the eager boffins of the world’s militaries for several reasons, none of which sound like they’ve been addressed in this research, which is long on bombast but short, at least in the SCMP article, on substance.
First there is the problem of power. …read more
Source:: TechCrunch Gadgets
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