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Hydrogen Fluoride Laser
The hydrogen fluoride laser is an infrared chemical laser. It is capable of delivering continuous output power in the megawatt range. Hydrogen fluoride lasers operate at the wavelength of 2.7-2.9 µm. This wavelength is absorbed by the atmosphere, effectively attenuating the beam and reducing its reach, unless used in a vacuum environment. However, when deuterium is used instead of hydrogen, the deuterium fluoride lases at the wavelength of about 3.8 µm. This makes the deuterium fluoride laser usable for terrestrial operations. Deuterium fluoride laser The deuterium fluoride laser constructionally resembles a rocket engine. In the combustion chamber, ethylene is burned in nitrogen trifluoride. This reaction produces free excited fluorine radicals. Just after the nozzle, the mixture of helium and hydrogen or deuterium gas is injected to the exhaust stream; the hydrogen or deuterium reacts with the fluorine radicals, producing excited molecules of deuterium fluoride ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infrared
Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around 1 millimeter (300 GHz) to the nominal red edge of the visible spectrum, around 700 nanometers (430 THz). Longer IR wavelengths (30 μm-100 μm) are sometimes included as part of the terahertz radiation range. Almost all black-body radiation from objects near room temperature is at infrared wavelengths. As a form of electromagnetic radiation, IR propagates energy and momentum, exerts radiation pressure, and has properties corresponding to both those of a wave and of a particle, the photon. It was long known that fires emit invisible heat; in 1681 the pioneering experimenter Edme Mariotte showed that glass, though transparent to sunlight, obstructed radiant heat. In 1800 the astronomer Sir William Herschel discove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helium
Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling and melting point are the lowest among all the elements. It is the second lightest and second most abundant element in the observable universe (hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant). It is present at about 24% of the total elemental mass, which is more than 12 times the mass of all the heavier elements combined. Its abundance is similar to this in both the Sun and in Jupiter, due to the very high nuclear binding energy (per nucleon) of helium-4, with respect to the next three elements after helium. This helium-4 binding energy also accounts for why it is a product of both nuclear fusion and radioactive decay. The most common isotope of helium in the universe is helium-4, the vast majority of which was formed during t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonardo Mascheroni
Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni (born 1935) is a physicist who, according to the United States government, attempted to sell nuclear secrets to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent posing as a Venezuelan spy. "U.S. authorities stressed that the Venezuelan government had no role in the affair." Background Mascheroni, originally from Argentina, went to the US in 1963 to study at the University of California, Berkeley, where he gained a doctorate. He became a US citizen in 1972. He worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1979 to 1987. In the 1980s he was suspected by some of his superiors of being a spy for Argentina, and whilst never charged (and no evidence being found by the FBI), was stripped of his security clearance and fired from Los Alamos in 1987. He left Los Alamos after a controversy surrounding his idea of using hydrogen fluoride lasers to generate nuclear fusion. Since then, he has been critical of Los Alamos and has attempted to lobby the United States Congres ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tactical High Energy Laser
The Tactical High-Energy Laser, or THEL, was a laser developed for military use, also known as the Nautilus laser system. The mobile version is the Mobile Tactical High-Energy Laser, or MTHEL. In 1996, the United States and Israel entered into an agreement to produce a cooperative THEL called the Demonstrator, which would utilize deuterium fluoride chemical laser technologies. In 2000 and 2001, THEL shot down 28 Katyusha artillery rockets and five artillery shells. On November 4, 2002, THEL shot down an incoming artillery shell. The prototype weapon was roughly the size of six city buses, made up of modules that held a command center, radar and a telescope for tracking targets, the chemical laser itself, fuel and reagent tanks, and a rotating mirror to reflect its beam toward speeding targets. It was discontinued in 2005. History On July 18, 1996, the United States and Israel entered into an agreement to produce a cooperative THEL, called the Advanced Concept Technology Demo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulsed Energy Projectile
Pulsed energy projectile or PEP is a technology of non-lethal weaponry. The U.S. military is developing PEP using an invisible laser pulse which ablates the target's surface and creates a small amount of exploding plasma. This produces a pressure wave that stuns the target and electromagnetic radiation that affects nerve cells causing a painful sensation. The technology can be used as a lethal weapon. The pulsed energy projectile is intended for riot control and is said to work over distances of up to 2 km. It weighs about 230 kg and can be mounted on vehicles. The US system was developed by Mission Research Corporation (now owned by Orbital ATK). It uses a chemical deuterium fluoride laser device producing infrared laser pulses. The plasma (produced by the early part of the pulse) explodes because its electrons absorb the energy of the later part of the pulse. In 2003, a US military review reported that the electromagnetic radiation produced by PEPs cause pain and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MIRACL
MIRACL, or Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser, is a directed energy weapon developed by the US Navy. It is a hydrogen fluoride laser, deuterium fluoride laser, a type of chemical laser. The MIRACL laser first became operational in 1980. It can produce over a megawatt of output for up to 70 seconds, making it the most powerful continuous wave (CW) laser in the US. Its original goal was to be able to track and destroy anti-ship cruise missiles, but in later years it was used to test phenomenologies associated with national anti-ballistic and anti-satellite laser weapons. Originally tested at a contractor facility in California, as of the later 1990s and early 2000s, it was located at a facility () in the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The beam size in the resonator is about wide. The beam is then reshaped to a square. Amid much controversy in October 1997, MIRACL was tested against Miniature Sensor Technology Integration-3, MSTI-3, a United States Air Force, US Air ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Government
The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a federal district (the city of Washington in the District of Columbia, where most of the federal government is based), five major self-governing territories and several island possessions. The federal government, sometimes simply referred to as Washington, is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U.S. Constitution in the Congress, the president and the federal courts, respectively. The powers and duties of these branches are further defined by acts of Congress, including the creation of executive departments and courts inferior to the Supreme Court. Naming The full name of the republic is "United States of America". No other name appears in the Constitution, and this i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naval Postgraduate School
The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a public graduate school operated by the United States Navy and located in Monterey, California. It offers master’s and doctoral degrees in more than 70 fields of study to the U.S. Armed Forces, DOD civilians and international partners. Established in 1909, the school also offers research fellowship opportunities at the postdoctoral level through the National Academies' National Research Council research associateship program. History On 9 June 1909, Secretary of the Navy George von L. Meyer signed General Order No. 27, establishing a school of marine engineering at Annapolis, Maryland. On 31 October 1912, Meyer signed Navy General Order No. 233, which renamed the school the Postgraduate Department of the United States Naval Academy. The order established courses of study in ordnance and gunnery, electrical engineering, radio telegraphy, naval construction, and civil engineering and continued the program in marine engineering. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical Resonator
An optical cavity, resonating cavity or optical resonator is an arrangement of mirrors or other optical elements that forms a cavity resonator for light waves. Optical cavities are a major component of lasers, surrounding the gain medium and providing feedback of the laser light. They are also used in optical parametric oscillators and some interferometers. Light confined in the cavity reflects multiple times, producing modes with certain resonance frequencies. Modes can be decomposed into longitudinal modes that differ only in frequency and transverse modes that have different intensity patterns across the cross-section of the beam. Many types of optical cavity produce standing wave modes. Different resonator types are distinguished by the focal lengths of the two mirrors and the distance between them. Flat mirrors are not often used because of the difficulty of aligning them to the needed precision. The geometry (resonator type) must be chosen so that the beam remains stable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stimulated Emission
Stimulated emission is the process by which an incoming photon of a specific frequency can interact with an excited atomic electron (or other excited molecular state), causing it to drop to a lower energy level. The liberated energy transfers to the electromagnetic field, creating a new photon with a frequency, polarization, and direction of travel that are all identical to the photons of the incident wave. This is in contrast to spontaneous emission, which occurs at a characteristic rate for each of the atoms/oscillators in the upper energy state regardless of the external electromagnetic field. According to the American Physical Society, the first person to correctly predict the phenomenon of stimulated emission was Albert Einstein in a series of papers starting in 1916, culminating in what is now called the Einstein B Coefficient. Einstein's work became the theoretical foundation of the MASER and LASER. The process is identical in form to atomic absorption in which the energy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, and highly combustible. Hydrogen is the most abundant chemical substance in the universe, constituting roughly 75% of all normal matter.However, most of the universe's mass is not in the form of baryons or chemical elements. See dark matter and dark energy. Stars such as the Sun are mainly composed of hydrogen in the plasma state. Most of the hydrogen on Earth exists in molecular forms such as water and organic compounds. For the most common isotope of hydrogen (symbol 1H) each atom has one proton, one electron, and no neutrons. In the early universe, the formation of protons, the nuclei of hydrogen, occurred during the first second after the Big Bang. The emergence of neutral hydrogen atoms throughout the universe occur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radical (chemistry)
In chemistry, a radical, also known as a free radical, is an atom, molecule, or ion that has at least one unpaired valence electron. With some exceptions, these unpaired electrons make radicals highly chemically reactive. Many radicals spontaneously dimerize. Most organic radicals have short lifetimes. A notable example of a radical is the hydroxyl radical (HO·), a molecule that has one unpaired electron on the oxygen atom. Two other examples are triplet oxygen and triplet carbene (꞉) which have two unpaired electrons. Radicals may be generated in a number of ways, but typical methods involve redox reactions. Ionizing radiation, heat, electrical discharges, and electrolysis are known to produce radicals. Radicals are intermediates in many chemical reactions, more so than is apparent from the balanced equations. Radicals are important in combustion, atmospheric chemistry, polymerization, plasma chemistry, biochemistry, and many other chemical processes. A majority ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
