Laserface

Lasers in most people's minds probably look and act like those found in such films like Star Wars. Multi coloured fun beams of death. Of course, real lasers don't work like that, especially in space.

First, imagine you're in a big space dog fight with all the homo-erotic undertones of Top Gun. You spot a boggy in the distance and line up your shot. You fire but - SHIT - you missed because you didn't aim far enough in front of the enemy and by the time your laser gets to it's target it's behind them.

You see this happen all the time in films. It's pretty stupid though seeing as lasers are made of light (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, to be exact) which is pretty damn fast. Really fucking fast in fact - Around 300 million meters a second.

So, when you take into account that in these space battles ships are usually only a couple of kilometers away it would only take a millionth of a second or less to reach it's destination.

It's been proven that the human mind cannot precive two events that happen within around 3 thousandths of a second of each other as separate events . So you'd never have to wait for your laser to hit, it'll all look like it happened at once, in your mind.

Now, let's say your enemy has super amazingly quick reactions and can hit some gay hyper drive system once he spots your lasers. WRONG. He won't be able to see the laser until some light from the firing gun has reached his eyes and by that time he'll have died a horrible death.

Add to all that the fact that all lasers in space would be invisible because, seeing as space is a vacuum, there is nothing for them to bounce off of and become visible.
Lasers you see at gigs and other such events have a load of smoke, dry ice and other such particles in the air to react with. This creates the long colourful laser beams you see at your discotheques.

The thing I think is the funniest though, when you cast this hyper analytical no fun geek logic to cinematic space epics, is that with all their amazing technological insights and breakthroughs that are but the fevered dreams of a mad man to us, they haven't developed a space ship with a perfectly mirrored hull, that would simply reflect the lasers and hence make them invulnerable to such attacks.

This isn't a post criticising these types of films for not being realistic, god forbid. If these films applied the laws of physics with such a stringent attitude, they'd be fucking shit and boring. They're unrealistic on purpose and with good reason. I just think the idea of laser combat in space, when broken down, kinda funny and redundant.

Looks shit hot though.

- Thanks to Steven Poole and his awesome book Trigger happy for the 'inspiration' for the above post -