Is it possible to make a skull piercing sattelite laser?

Something like a microwave ray or somethign to that effect, or an electromagentic ray that can shoot through rooves and skulls and short out neural circuitry.

I'm just askin because I'm freaked out about people using it to short people for having "undesirable" beliefs. A sort of covert fascism, as the victim would never know what hit them.

So is it possible? Is there such a frequency on the spectrum that could work? Among other possible problems...

Speculate please.

I don't know if I am understanding your question right?!

But I'm sure it is possible to construct a laser satellite that could kill people, but I don't think it is practical, guns are way cheaper and easier to use!

You don't even need a "gun" just deorbit a rock and drop it on their heads.


Just make sure your tin foil hat is on at all times and you will be safe.

I'm not sure it is - the laser would have to be huge (Megawatts?) to get the beam through the atmosphere. Just look up any of the development of plane or ship borne laser systems to see what I mean.

And the beam would be easily deflected at that range, by, for example, a tin foil hat. Who would have thought it!

(and imagine how difficult it would be to aim - the satellite would have to be accurate to 0.0001 degs in order to hit a 20cm head at 100km, and that is lower than orbit....)

I didn't say it would be easy, in fact I think it would be impossible to find anyone to pay for it, but I still think the engineering part of it is possible, though very impractical.

A tinfoil hat would not protect you though, since it does not reflect 100 % of the light, but going inside a building would probably complicate things a lot more for the satellite operator!

Anyway, hire an army instead, I think that would be cheaper, and they can search buildings.

Though the satellite would have a special kind of fear factor to it!

But hey, if you are looking to invest, I think I can name a few more worthy cases!

There's another problem in that a laser that big produces a lot of heat, and it's pretty difficult to get rid of heat in space. You could dump the medium, like that jumbo jet laser does, but then your satellite would run out of fuel pretty quickly.

Anyway, the history books are full of dictatorships crushing dissent, and none of them used space-based lasers to do it. There are much simpler and cheaper ways to control a population, like having an extensive spy apparatus (the Stasi in former East Germany), secret police (just about any dictatorship you care to mention), controlling the media (Italy, North Korea), or any combination of those. Religion also works well, as demonstrated during the Middle Ages in Europe. No laser required.

I'm not sure it is technically feasible - what mechanism can direct the laser to that degree of accuracy? In fact I think it needs to be a tenth of what I quoted, so accurate to 0.00001 degree. Not sure how that could be done. That is, I believe, much more accurate than the LHC needs to be!

As for tinfoil - given the beam will be pretty weak by the time it gets to ground level, tinfoil should do the job!

But as you say, just get an army - it's cheaper.

Just to up the levels of paranoia unless you read the small print.

Using satellite imagery to track 'killer' mice from space :-

http://www.gizmag.com/satellite-imagery ... dium=email

I actually think the twinkle effect of the atmosphere would put a limit on the accuracy of any spaced spaced weapon you might be able to microwave a crowd but i doubt you would be able to take out an individual.

And as this is the current world record breaker laser

http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/02 ... eedfetcher

I should not worry as it takes a full sized battleship to mount and power it and this does not i think have the skull pierce capability's at orbital distances let alone the accuracy tho its interesting that its tunable to overcome some atmospheric problems.

And as further reassurance it looks like they are having problems building a space based laser that "shoots" clouds

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12506847