Laser Pistols & Lightsabers
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- Science fiction amazes us with futuristic technology and weapons, but many like the laser pistol, raygun, or lightsaber seem high-tech versions of old tech. Are such weapons possible and if so, could they have a role in future warfare?
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Credits:
Laser Pistols & Lightsabers
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur
Episode 290a; May 16, 2021
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur
Script Editors:
Andy Nelson
Jason Burbank
Jerry Guern • Paleontology - by Jerr...
Matthew Campbell
Graphics by:
Ken York
Mihail Yordanov
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound epidemicsound.c... - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
"Setting like Warhammer 40k probably have the higher end of realism here"
Not something I ever thought I'd hear
I almost spat out my drink while listening. My parents were not happy I almost spat on the computer I bought for engineering.
Not as suprising. Mid era warhamer before Super smurfmarines aimed at gritty realism. I recomend reading the series Gaunts Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain as they realy show how the Imperial Gaurd opperates and conducts warfare.
He also said that in the episode he talks about planetary invasions, because having super heavy armor is very realistic
40K gets things right in a few surprising areas. For example the scale of space and spacefaring civilizations
Awesome! So uh like in the grim dark of the future there is only war! Fantastic!
Last time I was here this early, Lightsabers were an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
Man, that was a long time ago...
The good old days from that galaxy far far away
Hello there
Not as clumsy or random as a blaster.
was so good before KK n ruin rian vandalized it all . ditto for trek until kurtzman
"It's really hard to infiltrate someone's office with a tank"
I feel like I cannot disagree
Just need to get really good with tanks
Well i disagree you just need a small enough tank
CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED
challenge accepted!
But drive it through the mess line once and you get curbside service forever after.
There are not a lot of youtube channels where the sentence "It's hard to infiltrate enemy office with an ICBM" is uttered in full seriousness. (Well near-full).
After all the high and hyper technology, boots still need to be on the ground
Challenge Accepted
@@wilberator9608 E4 mafia, huh?
Cowabunga it is!
I would like to see a video compilation of your "first rules of combat" in rapid succession. Would be a long video :)
Might become the modern-day Art of War...
I came to comment the same thing - thanks for getting there first John Boen ;)
It'd be awesome!
General: Cpt. do you see that "first rule of combat" video over there?
Captain: No, there isn't one
General: that's right - NOW FIX IT.
There used to be a thread on Reddit several years ago with every 1st rule of SFIA Warfare
Here's one from the legend himself on FB
m.facebook.com/groups/1583992725237264?view=permalink&id=1796162247353643
Yeah that’d be awesome
My dad's Marine unit in the tail end of Nam was tank support. You generally don't want to let the enemy rush a tank, which they can do when you're dealing with hidden tunnels and thick forests/jungles. If they get on it they might get _in_ it, and the First Rule of Warfare is don't let your enemy capture your war gear.
Wait, how would enemies get into a tank your currently operating? do tanks not have locks on the doors?
@@lucky-segfault , they do, but if it's a hot day and you're not expecting an attack ...
Don’t forget that tankers have to breath. And its rather hot inside a tin can.
@@massimookissed1023 and neither are the sentries, who all want to go home and see their wife, and no one’s really worried because nothings happened in so long that by the time you can really process what just turned a tank barrel on your camp and firing on it, you’re either dead or running away from a battle you clearly couldn’t win.
I’ve never been to war, but I guarantee I’d run if it was so clear it was a lost cause that it’s death or be fast and hard to hit. At some point, unless you have a super strong compulsion to die for a cause or simply don’t really think you’ll care in the heat of the moment, that others will feel the same and we can all survive and Avenge the ones that gave us time
"Passwords aren't normally left out for the world to see..."
Me: thinks back to that promo photo made by the air force with a sticky note on the computer with the password for the defense grid released to the public...
And it's not like maga corps still don't make blunders dumber than that in 2021... then cover it up.
That was Dr. Baltar's, wasn't it?
Many years ago I was the new guy when an security audit was coming. I wrote some wrong passwords on a sticky note very messily. Apparently that wasted about 100 man-hours as they tried to brute force the gibberish. I got called out for breaking the rules, but I told them that all the passwords were not even close to right. The auditors groaned at that.
A physical honeypot! I love it.
So basically you made the system even more secure by leading them on a wild goose chase. That's amazing.
I could actually see that as a protocol to follow on an irregular basis, maybe when 3d6 roll an 18 on a Monday morning in someone's office, in order to trap spies. It could even be a false password which signals security of an attempted breach and calls down Hell on the terminal where it is being used.
I applaud you sir.
You're a genius
Nicoll Dyson Beam: that's cute
What a cool light show
What if you had some sort of very advanced alloy forming a rod that you could carry in your hand that created a wormhole into the beam coming out of a blazar or something like that (Yes it's stupid and it would blow up and it wouldn't be practical and everything else but I'm stupid)
Said Palpatine
SFIA just over the last month: Human modification, Multiverse, Post-Human Species, Post-Scarcity society
SFIA just today: Today we let our hair down a bit and look at concepts that normally would be more the realm of popular fiction than possible future
:) I suppose its a bit eye of the beholder
The first rule of warfare: stay alive while never fighting fair after you've prepared a drink and a snack
:)
In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, melee weapons are used because they're fighting on ships and stations where ranged weapons risk causing too much collateral damage.
Not just that, but the tight spaces tend to mean the enemy would be encountered within ten meters or so, and personal armor is common and protects reasonably well ... given all that, a big two-handed axe is hardly a poor choice.
I think collateral damage is not so much the risk there, remember they had the explosive "Zephyr Particles" which they used to flood the interior of ships/stations sometimes to force troops to use not just melee weapons but on at least one occasion a crossbow too!
Also, there are a few scenes where we see handheld beam weapons used against troops wearing fully-sealed suits of armour and the armour is shown to be quite resistant to beam weapons, but still vulnerable to melee weapons wielded by similarly armoured troops.
and i’d think that even then the small ranged weapons are for then when some collateral is fine but destroying the station/ship isn’t, as to explain why they don’t use the battleship scale weaponry
@@coyote2792 The dagger was one of the biggest knight killers. Your enemy have too much armor? Stab them in the spot where the armor joints!
It's crazy to think that future duels could look more like a bullet hell game with power armor than a Jedi vs Sith fight.
I was wondering why didn't he mention that lasers can be diffused with air pockets or cushions relatively easily but bullets can't.
That would make a killer game, like Touhou + power armor
@@yeetyateyote5570 TouDam Wars: 40,000
Just wait til we get super far into the future when war just becomes a rythmn game. Call of DDR: Modern Dancing
bullet hell melee? NieR Gestalt/Replicant and Automata's got that down...
"Settings like Warhammer 40k probably have the higher end of realism here"
A disturbing thought.
5 minutes in, already onto the second first rule of warfare - god I love this so much, but I imagine that in a compendium of Isaac Arthur's First Rules of Warfare, they'd have to be listed chronologically!
I want him to make like 10 almost identical shirts, each with a different first rule of warfare printed, so I could wear the same looking shirt with a different rule every day. He could sell it as "the first rules of warfare collection", I'd buy it.
@@achillesa5894 This is a glorious idea, the perfect compromise between the minimalist who wishes to wear a consistent, personal uniform and those who enjoy some variance day by day!
@@achillesa5894 Fascinating
I now have a mental image of humanoid drones, a foot tall, fighting in a lovely garden. Lol. Hell of a transition.
The Gnome Wars have began.
_About an hour ago_
_In a yard across the street..._
Operation market garden
Reminds me of the scene in Disenchantment, the gnomes vs the trolls of something alike.
Last I checked someone was still selling battle gnomes. Actual garden gnomes that come dressed like US infantryman of several specialties or RPG and AK toting Taliban.
Ace: Sir, I don't understand. What good's a knife in a nuke fight? All you have to do is press a button, sir.
Zim: Put your hand on that wall trooper. PUT YOUR HAND ON THAT WALL!
[Zim throws knife, Ace screams]
Zim: The enemy can not press a button, if you have disabled his hand. Medic!
"Starship Troopers"
First time I saw that scene I was in shock, I was 13.
Now that I'm 36 I totally agree with the logic.
Learned him good ... learned him good 😂
Zim? I think you mean Mr. Krabs...
@@Rattus-Norvegicus "That would be Private Krabs, sir"
It's actually a good scene that shows how individuals are disposal too for a fascist military. Like in a normal world he could have made that same point without stabbing someone's hand, but because the lack of care for their wellbeing as canon fodder it is no big deal.
"...Plasma rifle in the 70 watt range..." "Hey, only what you see pal"
"Uzi nine milimeter"
"You know your weapons buddy. Any one of these is suitable for home defense"
Isaac, according to Star Wars lore (or at least some of it) The plasma in a lightsaber's blade loops back to the hilt in a similar way to how active support structures operate.
I'm glad for the return of Isaac's First Rule(s) of Warfare.
There’s only one first rule of warfare, it’s...
Sounds like a new line of merch:
SFIA Tshirt
(FRONT)The First Rule of Warfare...
(BACK) is whatever tf I say it is -Isaac Arthur
🤣
I'd wear that
@@jn8604 There is a reason why every rule is the first, it's in an early episode
@@SkylerLinux ahh, I have yet to see every episode, although I've heard a half a dozen first rules so far, I'll see if I can find that one ;)
rule number 0: if you have a giant robot loaded with weapons just short of a nuclear bomb...
bring it to the fight
My take is that the light of a light saber is a side effect, though useful to be able to see where the blade is. The blade is really a very thin forcefield that disrupts molecular bonds.
Oh you mean like the blades of the scythe and the sword of Death in the novels of Sir Terry Pratchett?
@@bp9762 didn't the scythe cut light beams? Ah, no it was honed on the first light of sunrise? Been a looong time since I read that one.
In Avengers Endgame, Nebula had what looked like a mono-fillament knife; the edge had an energy sheath to hold in whatever that filament was, which is one way they've been done in other sci-fi.
23:09 I am pretty sure from the Star Wars lore that light sabers actually started in a pack configuration so there was wires and stuff connected for the first light sabers and some sort of box strapped to your backside. Am I remembering that correctly? It reminds me of the man made one in the video.
Protosabers.
Ya that's protosabers. Also very cool, but dangerous to yourself if the cable catches on something
Understandable.
The first cell phones came tethered to a small car battery.
Unless you subscribe to Disney canon, in which case the crystals have always provided an infinite amount of power and are also sentient, force-sensitive beings.
@@gigastrike2 So my crazy Aunt was right all along!
As yes, the first rule of warfare, never bring a light saber to a laser pistol fight.
You can ignore that rule if you're a space wizard.
Actually, it's the other way around because in any universe where you'd need a laser sword is a universe where they had invented a counter-measure to ranged attacks (like Dune) where you'd have to resort to a higher powered weapon and the tradeoff to this higher power is less range.
@@TJCID22 nonono,
The first rule of warfare, the laser sniper always has the highest range and damage, but the lowest rate of fire.
Yes, I'd like to see Darth Vader whip out his light sabre, and twirls it, while Harrison Ford, dressed as Indiana Jones, just casually pulls out a 45 and shoots him in his face grille. Game over man!
@@SpecialEDy I said higher power not rate of power. Projectiles lose energy and force with distance so in this scenario, where one has a nigh-perfect countermeasure against ranged attacks (like in Dune) a shorter ranged weapon would be more effective.
What I enjoy most about your program is pulling back the curtain to allow a detailed analysis of what the actual physics are behind sci-fi technologies. There are similar videos out there, but it's sporadic, not like your channel which is actually dedicated to the detailed scenerios behind this stuff. I really enjoy your channel. Thank you for having it.
I think #1 rule of warfare "Don't Die" is by far my favourite
_"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country._
_He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for_ his _country."_
~ Gen George S Patton
I like Patton's "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
@Isaac, when you reach 1 million subscribers, would you consider a compilation of the first rules of combat?
The First Rule of Warfare: never pile all of your rules in one vulnerable compilation.
@@annoyed707 not wrong. But let's face it. There will be more first rules.
"This is usually going to be fatal to anything you should not be screaming & running away from."
*Shows Tyranids*
Isaac Arthur: it's really hard to infiltrate an office with a tank...
Ursarkar E. Creed: hold my cervisiam.
CREEEEEEED!!!
don't you mean Recaf?
I believe there's a Titan hiding behind that thic bastards box of sigars
Isaac Arthur: it's really hard to infiltrate an office with a tank
Gunner Jurgen would like to take issue with this statement
The Tau now have a stealth walker tank, right?
I ran and performed repairs on a couple laser welders. One was dedicated to a specific weld. Stainless steel to stainless steel. The weld created was 1/2" circle, with a weld width of 0.05". The welder pulsed at 50 hertz with each pulse of the beam being in the few millisecond range.
The welds produced were .015 deep max. A hermetic seal of a certain strenght was the goal. So, draw a 1/2" circle with a Sharpie marker. Imaging a weld that width 0.015 deep into stainless.
The welder that made that circle took 5 seconds to make that weld. The flame that was visible above the weld during the process was less than an inch long.
After a control upgrade I had a fault occur that we had for 20 years reset by using our fingers to remove the jammed part, then homing the machine and hitting start to weld the next part. But during the upgrade the code was changed such that we I reached into the weld area the beam came on. In less than the second it took to feel the pain, and snap my hand away from the beam I burned a 1/2" long, 1/16" wide, perfectly shaped slot through the fingernail and half way through my finger.
It did not seal the wound. The blood flowed freely. It healed with incident but it took a couple months for the nail to grow the slot away.
The power supple and beam generating parts of the welder are big enough to fill the bed of a large pickup. And probably have a combine weight of well over a ton.
Just saying. Portable lasers of real power are not small.
In System Shock 2 there was laser sabre, that still have some realism to it. It was made of elastic material that was completely reflecting light inside while in relaxed shape. But bended by hitting target was realising all stored radiation intensively burning it (at least how i remember the description). So making it close range weapon was a way around to get higher laser density (focus) and storage (it would take a while to build up the radiation inside).capacitors
Here we go with more "First rule of warfare is..."
Somebody needs to make a list of those.
The most logical version of blades used in scyfy i've seen is in
Legend of the Galactic Heroes. The use of an inert gas developed for mining asteriods, that blows up when too much heat energy, by way of a laser is imparted into it for example, as well as laser resistant armor, created the need to built an axe-laserrifle hybrid. Even when the battery of the gun runs dry, you can use that "diamond-like" blade.
Sword.
215 kilotons of energy. just a tad under 4 czar bomba's by the last figures I saw. Still an impressive bang.
One caveat about the rule against "fighting fair": when I was training to be a Marine field medic, I was warned that Marines have an impulse to do exactly that, even when it's acutely stupid to do so. An example given was a group who came in from a patrol in Vietnam in an armored personnel carrier with sword wounds. How? A group of Montagnards with cutlasses came at their APC out of the woods, and the Marines fixed bayonets and engaged with them...and then the poor Corpsmen had to patch them up afterward.
“Putting their coffee cups into the convenient holder in their PC.” Nice reference to people’s odd uses of the CD tray, Isaac.
Oh I forgot this was coming out this Sunday!
*hurries off to prep a drink and snack*
I have the drink. A snack would be wise 🙄
The first rule of warfare: Swords rarely run out of ammunition.
The second rule of warfare: CQC will always be a thing.
Second rule: must always have enough stamina and training.
Rule Zero: Stay off the X.
Part of the problem I see with most futuristic weapons is that they really don't solve any problems. Look at railguns. You still have to carry the energy, you still have to carry the projectile. Lasers get around this somewhat, but for them to be effective they have to put out so much energy that they're actually moderately dangerous to the user as well. Plasma mostly has the same problems, in most cases you're going to be carrying a hell of a lot of energy, and probably a canister of hydrogen as well. (It's space. You can't always rely on air.)
When it comes right down to it, bullets WORK. They also have the virtue of being cheap and easy to produce. Armies are organizations of habit, and extremely fond of these features.
I am ever more curious of the stock footage every episode.
It is mostly not stock footage but actually animated by a team for the show
Meson guns are a shipboard weapon system in the Traveller game setting. They work by combining matter and anitmatter to produce a pion, a kind of neutral meson that can travel through armor like a neutrino. Because they're precisely accelerated to relativistic velocities, they decay into into a streak gamma radiation in around and in the target. Because they don't interact with normal matter until they decay, they also serve as well-defended planetary defense weapons, with artillery installations deep underground.
hey Issac, as some on who was in Iraq around the same time as you its so refreshing to hear someone who knows what their talking about usually Im cringing half the time.
Sometimes scary-looking melee weapons are used for their psychological effect as much as for self defense. Modern troops will sometimes fix bayonets to boost their own morale as well as to scare the crap out of any bad guys in the area. It's one thing to shoot at a squad of Marines a few hundred meters away. It's a whole new ballgame when that squad is breaking into your position and stabbing and beating you to death with a crazy look in their eyes.
I got to say I love seeing the Carrier Marines running up and down the Deck with Kettle Balls and doing Shooting Drills.
Longer bullets are quite stable. Arrows aren't really a good comparison because they are generally very long, usually over at least a foot. Bullets are generally less than an inch. Any destabilization caused by the "shaft" of the bullet wobbling would be so minute that it's basically irrelevant, especially at short ranges. In fact a problem with short bullets is that they have less surface area to engage with the rifling in the barrel. Longer bullets also allow you to add more mass without increasing diameter of the bullet. More mass means the round is less susceptible to wind and it has more kinetic energy to impart on impact.
This episode helps a lot with my story. I was gonna just stick to rail/cool guns but perhaps I can expand the arsenal a bit.
"This is usually going to be fatal to anything you should not be screaming and running away from."
*Shows the Tyranids from Warhammer 40K*
Views on this episode: *S T O N K S*
Edit: holy cow those animations are godly
If real life physics hold you back, make up your own.
~Gundam on Minovsky physics
Love the Forgotten Weapons cameo
A lightsaber is still a knife folks. Stop imagining it as a superweapon or superior weapon.
Truly, it was the warrior wielding it that caused it to truly be special.
A power suit with a nanobot cannister. Turn your enemies and their gear into useful items. Like maybe a 750 mil bottle of 12 year old Scotch.
you're thinking too small, you could repair and reload whenever you take a bogey down
Careful Isaac, my inner child's hopes and dreams are at stake with regards to light sabers and laser blasters!
Something most people forget about possible laser weapons, it's not the laser that will do the damage, it's the steam explosion from pumping the energy into the water in their tissues. So the trick is making the area of the beam wide enough that the energy will be transmitted to an appropriate area and in a wavelength that will be most readably absorbed, while also punching through their armor. They will have to be variable frequency to accomplish all this, or waste energy by being broad spectrum.
Laser or plasma swords aside, the idea of melee combat in sci-fi early on was partly fueled by the notion that you didn't want to fire bullets inside your spaceship. At least you wanted a back up for when you were near an exterior bulkhead or nuclear reactor. Swords fit the bill nicely and lend to nice relatable action sequences that a hero can engage in and not die immediately.
And CQB is still a thing and Long arms are hard to use in close quarters not to mention the stories of Marines and Army in baghdad at the end of the Iraq war getting jumped and resorting a tomahawk a hand ax... In WW2 1 of the scariest things the Japanese had was the Katana rush in the CQC evoment of the jungle. It's like the idea of the Dogfight going away maybe 90% of the time your a missile boat but stealth on stealth, low ammo counts, or a furball then you are going to dog fight.
Coming home from a long trip, was thinking this morning it'd be awesome if some new SFIA came out today would make the drive better....bam! Saved my day IA , love this channel bro keep it up!
Me: Sees video about Laser Pistols & Lightsabers
Issac: Also "Warhammer 40,000k Chain Sword probably the most realistic"
Me the Intellectual: "Ah why quite yes the Emperor very well indeed does protect brother!"
Actually, the Chainsaws are an Eldar idea, probably a BDSM toy.
Are you saying the Emperor copied the holy chainsword off an Eldar’s sex toy!?
@@____________838 Yes
“This is not canon!!!”
@@____________838 The Eldars have been using chainswords for 65 millon years
6:33 Firing the L85A2 from the left shoulder is a great way to get a broken jaw from the reciprocating charging handle. 🤕
(Which is why British soldiers are trained to always fire from the right shoulder)
I know I felt bad whenever I saw southpaws shooting the m-16/m4…
I always liked Niven's variable sword
Why we still have rifles: A soldier's weapon need only kill the other guy, anything more is unnecessary weight and will slow down the soldier. We could give them superpowerful weapons but they are still one man. One bad guy with a knife that stabs your supersoldier in the neck and you just lost not only a human life but all his equipement too.
So all you need is to kill an equal, tank kill other tank, battleship kill other battleship, soldier kill other soldier.
(Yes anti-tank weapons can be carried by infantry but they can only a few shots and are still slowed down)
Murphy's law: your weapon is made by the lowest bidder.
The tank is primarily an anti-infantry weapon.
@@calvingreene90 you saying you need a 6 inch radius cannon firing Heat rounds (high explosive Anti tank) to kill a man.
Yes you right. The 50 claiber machine guns on most tanks can tear infantry.
Most mordern tanks are primarily for fight mixed infantry and tank forces.
And tanks were invented to defeat infantry.
@@walterhaider869
Being effective against tanks does not make destroying tanks it main job. If you want to hunt tanks get a CAS aircraft.
The big gun is closer to a five inch bore.
The reason for 7.62mm rather than 5.56mm is range.
@@calvingreene90 good points, thanks for the intelligent replies instead of: wEll ActUalLY tanks.
Very much appreciated
2:45 that spent casing toss, what a mad lad (probably cuz it was pipping hot)
Here when the video is still unlisted.
yeah, distracted afternoon :P
@@isaacarthurSFIA ayyy I was in the first 500
@@isaacarthurSFIA The best kind.
The topic of concealed weapons made me think of the controllable wires you see so much in anime or manga. Makes me wonder if such a thing would ever be possible in real life.
Something else I think worth pointing out, on the topic of laser pistols/swords, that I seem to remember learning from another channel, is that vaporizing someone wouldn't lead to them disappearing into particles, but generally exploding into a bloody mess. Sooo... very high energy close combat weapons might not be to useful.
I'm reminded of the Proxima and Ultima books. In an alternate timeline the Roman empire never ended but retained melee and low velocity flechette weapons. These were to be used instead of modern guns for spaceship boarding actions and combat in such pressurised areas.
I often watch episodes with the idea of how the conceptual topics might help me think about my own writing. One of my current projects, for instance, deals with futuristic soldiers and their weapons (who do not use beam weapons) and another race who use the equivalent of clark-tech. Seeing the topics at the end of the video, however, makes me rather interested in the "two races evolving on the same world" because I have a planet in this story idea who actually have three races inhabiting a world (two reptilians who are active during the day, and a mammalian species who is active at night). So, as I said, I'm looking forward to the June 3rd episode.
Can't wait for some big directed energy weapons and Particle/coaxial laser weapons in the June epsiode. I helped work on B.E.A.R Space flown Neutral Particle Beam weapon demonstrator flight.
As a funny weapon side note, people around me have recently taken an interest in archery as a way of getting in touch with their primitive roots. As a rock skipping & throwing aficionado, I take slight umbrage in their idea of what primitive really means. ;)
You should arrive at the next archery meet-up sporting an atl-atl ;)
Reminds me of the novel Forever War…
It's worth noting that lightsabers in Star Wars in particular are also symbolic/ceremonial, or at least were supposed to be during peacetime. The Jedi were keepers of the peace, which is why they traditionally didn't carry blasters. So it's always important to keep in mind what purpose you want the weapon to fulfil.
Normal people: "It's hard to invade someone's office with an ICBM."
Israel: "Hold my beer."
What??
Ahh yes, I miss having an ANY key.
What do you mean? half the games on PC still ask for it.
Is there not a joke keyboard with that very key on it?
So psycho-pass's dominator style weapon can come in a century or two that's good to know : )
Proud to be a subscriber for years now ♥️
Just got in, and I must say as a longtime lover of energy weapons and futuristic plasma and laser weapons specifically I know for a fact that this tech is possible. Just a matter of micronization and power output from powerful enough small batteries. I always wanted a badass laser pistol. Hopefully in the year 2077 when I'm an old man I have one.
I like that of all placed on Earth for the alien lasering a terrestrial target, they chose Florida. Not the worst choice and it looks like they missed my grandmother thankfully.
I think it is really cool that you served in the military. It's neat to see your insight being used in this video.
I think it’s neat that you served in the military. It’s neat to see your insight being used to make chicken.
A light saber could have some kind of shaped magnetic fields that confine plasma within a long loop.
In general, melee makes sense in ship boarding actions. Presume that ships are not made of impossible materials, any ballistic weapon is a threat to the ship. Presuming ships are large, expensive, and thus something you want to "capture" rather than destroy (which was the case in the age of sale where capture was preferred to destruction because of the great value of each ship). Outside of major ship vs ship actions in fleets where destruction is preferable to capture, you still found in the age of sail that capture was yet common and thus boarding actions. In a boarding action in this scenario, neither side wants to damage or destroy the ship so melee weapons become the common solution for boarding parties along with something that won't damage equipment like super soft lead bullets or flechete weapons. But considering that there is likely armor tech to block such soft attacks and the still small chance of critically damaging the ship, you default back to melee arms to get the job done. It has the added bonus of hearkening back to the age of sail and thus makes for great narrative.
I don't think hacking will ever die. It's just the other side of the same coin that creates security they evolve together.
Agreed. Unless we get AI's writing all our software in the future (putting me out of a job), people will always make mistakes or have blindspots that an attacker will be able to exploit. Like you say, hackers and their security counterparts will keep evolving, but I can't see it being ended in the near to mid future.
@10:18 - "So three shots disintegrates them!" --Martin Lloyd, Stargate SG-1
The laser and plasma weapons may find most of their use in wielding. With significant portability of course and more found in your local Home Depot than a gun shop. Of course anything with lethal power ranges can still be used for self defense.
Many of these future weapons would pretty much be weaponized versions of industrial tools, repurposed for combat but still maintaining their utility.
Welding, you mean?
There will always be a need for small arms; I think it was the Airforce that learned this the hard way in the 70s or 80s when they made _jet fighters without guns._ Yes you read that correctly. They just carried missiles, because somebody had the bright idea that jets could get by on 4-8 missiles and call it a day. This was disabused when radar and fast fighters _with_ guns turned up on the other side, and after the fancy US missile fighters blew their loads they had to make a break for it and hope to hell they didn't get overtaken & shot down. The jet was subsequently redesigned and retrofitted.
50s and 60s The F-4 Phantom II in particular.
The Sparrow missile at the time had a kill probability of less than 10%, which they did not know would be so low. If the missile was as reliable as advertised, the evaluation of missiles in the early Vietnam War era would have been seen differently, though I expect cannons would have still made a return.
Modern medium-range air-to-air missiles have a kill probability of around 60%, so pilots are much less likely to need their cannon, but their possible utility will keep guns around while we still have manned air superiority fighters.
i feel like that atom scene is Issac portraying himself as the "bit" professor teaching a set of physics classes😇
Mr. Arthur,
I very much enjoy your futurist visions and how you make them all seem plausible. But I also wanted to compliment you on your understanding of warfare. I've never heard you say anything regarding battle at any level that I could take exception too, and I've been listening to you for some years now.
See I really like StarTrek's Phaser a continuous beam Laser Pistol. It's a fine weapon, even if we don't ever manage a stun setting. It's very useful in the field with sustained uses to melt or even cut most material, but also in emergency survival setting; it can heat rocks to slowly radiate heat or start a fire.
We could make a laser do most of the things a phaser can do for real!
We have several options for non-lethal settings in addition to the traditional dazzler/blinder;
-first you use a pair of UV lasers to create a circuit of ionised air to the target you could make a wireless taser, but this requires two emitters, and UV is a poor performer in atmosphere for other roles, so this is not the best option
-the best option is to use the principle of laser-supported detonation and fire two powerful pulses in very rapid succession to first create a plasma and then make it explode, the effect is similar to a flashbang grenade with a mini EMP thrown in for good measure
Then of course we have our continuous beam mode, which is useful for cutting and welding, but could also be used to ignite clothing, boil water, and cook flesh.
But for truly lethal use, we dont want to waste energy trying to burn through a target using a continuous beam, instead we want to fire a chain of nanosecond duration pulses at microsecond intervals, each one with the energy of a firecracker, focused into an area of just a couple millimetres across and applied within a couple of milliseconds. With such a rapid and concentrated application of thermal energy, we only need a few kilojoules rather than a megajoule to drill through a plate of armour or a human torso.
The disintegration feature is the only one we cant realistically integrate (unless you wanna muck around with particle beams and antimatter, not advisable) but it is overrated anyway as even if you could the result would be messy as hell and in an enclosed space the overpressure could be pretty lethal to you.
One function of the TNG phasers that we can integrate tho is the unique way their beams seem able to slew off-axis to hit a target, and we do that by using an optical phased array as our emitter rather than using traditional focusing optics (which are less rugged and need to be mechanised in order to compensate for atmospheric variations anyway - the beam slewing isnt the main advantage but it could be useful)
For non-combat purposes, the hand laser isnt just a welder and cutter and cooker - when set to very low levels of energy, you could use it to transmit signals, you could use it as a handheld LIDAR, and best of all, you could even use it to perform spectroscopy - just plug it into your tricorder and zap that rock to find the alien treasures!
I Finally agree with one of your "First rules of Warfare" being "Don't Die, that's the enemy's job"
13B! King of battle ! Hell yeah brother .We were in at the same time too lol
"In war you don't necessarily know what your own forces are doing." This is true which explains many blue on blue incidents.
So, I've put a lot of thought into the so called plot hole of the Deathstar's vent shaft since I found this channel and Kyle Hill's videos. And I've come to a realization that although there is very little materiel in space's near vacuum to actually act as a heat sink through convective ventilation, it would be possible to use ferrofluids, or even just regular fluids, to create rings of coolant around a space station or space craft if gravity manipulating technologies like artificial gravity or tractor beams could actually exist, or even even just with magnetism. Once the stores of coolant inside the craft or station have absorbed as much heat as they can handle, you could vent them out into orbit around you, and pull in the coolest ring to replace it. As a ring of fluids would have a much higher surface area than a radiator panel, it's possible that this could be a more efficient means of radiating waste heat, assuming the mechanisms used to vent and orbit the coolant doesn't generate so much heat that it basically nullifies any advantages gained. This could also create a viable form of stealth for a spacecraft, which could surround itself in a cloud of fluids rather than orderly rings, in an attempt to mimic a comet.
Of course, I'm purely self-educated, and I went through a series of poorly funded public schools for my K-12 education. So maybe this is all impossible and cartoonish thinking to someone who really knows the science behind space flight and orbital mechanics. But it seemed just plausible enough to me that I thought it was worth sharing here.
Most fluids evaporate in a sudden and abrupt fashion in vacuum - turning into a cloud of rapidly expanding gas. (which is a wonderful way to cool it, assuming you can contain the gas for future condensation)
@@muninrob Would it be possible to magnetize ferrofluids enough that they'd spread into a cloud but not completely dissipate?
@@flyboymike111357 Do you still consider it ferro-"fluid" when it's suspension fluid has evaporated leaving a fine ferro-magnetic dust?
I'd use physical containment - but that still leaves you needing to either radiate the heat or eject objects you concentrated that heat into.
P.S. Good "heat pipes" for your computer work by the same "phase -change" principle as the system you described - so it IS a good idea for how to shift that heat from where you don't want it to where you do.
@@muninrob Theoretically, as long as the dust is still captured within the gravitational or magnetic field so that it can be pulled back into the station or ship to act as a heat sink it might still be plausible. Maybe more in a universe like star wars that have containment fields for holding plasma bolts and lightsaber blades.
@@flyboymike111357 It's essentially a droplet radiator then, just one that's dispersed like a ring around the death star.
There is another kill/stun mode that lasers can perform. If you take a laser and have it pulse twice in quick succession, the first pulse can superheat a small amount of material in a plasma. The second much more powerful pulse then hits that plasma and expands it rapidly creating concussive force. I don't remember where I read it, but a paper covered this and suggested that at lower powers, it stuns the nervous system. This is just me extrapolating here, but at higher powers, I imagine that soft body armors would not protect against a massive concussive punch to the chest. In fact, a lot of hard armors tend to be brittle materials such as ceramics, so they may not survive more than one shot from it either.
One more reason to melee: If you are in some facility that is literally irreplaceable to everyone and both side cant risk some small thing like losing control of said place to losing it forever. Like some magical FTL portal some ancient alien left there in a otherwise no-FTL setting. Any factions fighting in there will have to take great care not to damage anything important there. Another reason is that you want to avoid escalating a conflict into a war preciously BECAUSE both side have advanced weapons. For that we do have a real life example here: The melee border fight of India and China recently.
1:32 that's some cool alternate non-militant uses you brought up for something like a lightsaber and to me that would be within the realm of what a Jedi in Star Wars would do like going through a burning building to save someone or rescue people from a collapsed mine. Maybe there's episode in a Star Wars TV show where that happens and I'm just not remembering. My point is it would be cool to see a scene from a Star Wars film or TV show where that happens.
I'm particularly fond of person sized coil guns with a block of metal or other raw materials inside that the gun manufactures ammunition from as needed. a smart weapon that can adjust projectile density, velocity and fragmentation on the fly.
There's also the issue with heat generated by guns using plasma. There's the concept of Heat Sinks in the videogame Mass Effect, which concentrate the heat into a special part of the gun (similar to a magazine) which is then ejected and replaced when it gets overheated
You just shot up to legendary status! I've enjoyed your videos a lot, but I didn't know you served.
Sir, I salute you!
Physicist, futurist, soldier and one of the best people on youtube!
Great work Isaac & Team! Laser-focused as always.
Yayy! Set phasers to fun.
Phased plasma rifle at 40W range.
Gun Jesus has blessed this video. Allelujah!
Artillery units were the last to still be issued swords for combat. The troops used them to chop branches.
One objection: any laser small arm powerful enough to burn through someone isn't going to cauterize its wound channel. Or rather, it will cauterize, it just won't matter because of what happens first, namely all that excess thermal energy is going to flash boil the water in your cells. In other words, a flesh explosion. As you might imagine, having a hole explosively drilled through your torso does not do good things to what's still un-holed, and even with most of the mangled edges of the hole solidly cooked there's probably more than enough ruptures into the still squishy parts that you'll be bleeding heavily through it regardless.
Laughed real hard when he said that warhammer 40k is mostly real🤣🤣🤣