Scientists, futurists, and science fiction writers have talked about this for over a century, and science fiction fans have dreamed about it for a long time. A portable, directed energy weapon that wipes out your enemies by taking them apart or leaving behind heaps of ash!
The concept has gone through many iterations over the decades, from laser pistols and cannons to phasers. Also, this stack of science fiction is heavily based on scientific facts. Since the early 20th century, scientists have sought to develop workable directed energy weapons based on ideas put forward by many inventors and scientists.
Definition
The Death Ray is a theoretical electromagnetic or beam weapon that was independently proposed in the 1920s and 1930s by many scientists. Since then, research on this energy weapon has continued. Although most of the examples come primarily from science fiction, several uses have been proposed in the second half of the 20th century.
Directed-energy weapons like the Death Star's superlaser are a common feature of science fiction
Photo: Wookieepedia / Lucasfilm
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History
In the early 20th century, many scientists claimed they had created a working version of the death ray. For example, in September 1924, British inventor Harry Grindel Matthews tried to sell what he called a death ray, which could destroy human life and shoot down planes approaching the British Air Ministry.
Although he was unable to create a functioning model or demonstrate it to the military, news of this prompted American inventor Edwin Scott to claim that he was the first to develop that very death ray. According to Scott, he invented it in 1923, the result of nine years of work as a student and protege of Charles Steinmetz, a German-American professor at Union College in New York, USA.
In 1934, Spanish inventor Antonio Longoria claimed to have invented the death ray, which he tested on pigeons from a distance of 6.5 km. He also claimed to have killed the mice, which were imprisoned in a thick-walled metal chamber.
However, at that time there was another famous inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla, who provided the most complete basis for such a device. In 1934, in an interview with Time Magazine, Tesla explained the concept of a "telepower" (directed energy) weapon that would be capable of destroying entire squadrons of aircraft or an entire army from a distance of 400 km.
Photo of Tesla sitting in his laboratory in Colorado Springs with an "amplifying transmitter" generating millions of volts
Photo: Wikipedia Commons / Century Magazine / Dickenson V. Alley.
Tesla tried to interest the US military and several European countries in this device, although none of them signed a contract with Tesla. Tesla described his invention in an article titled "The End War Machine" published in Liberty Magazine in 1935:
“This invention does not involve the use of any so-called death rays. Rays are not used because they cannot be produced in the required quantities and their intensity decreases rapidly with distance. All of New York's energy (approximately two million horsepower), converted into rays and directed at a distance of 20 miles, cannot kill a human being, because, according to a well-known law of physics, it will be dissipated, becoming ineffective. My apparatus projects particles that can be relatively large or microscopic in size, allowing us to deliver trillions of times more energy into a small area at a great distance than is possible with any kind of beam. Many thousands of horsepower can be transferred in a stream thinner than a hair, so nothing can resist."
Based on his description, the device would represent a large tower that can be installed on the roof of a building located near the shore or near important infrastructure. These weapons, as Tesla argued, would be defensive in nature, making any people using them impregnable to attack from the air, land or water, and at a distance of up to 322 km.
During World War II, many attempts were made by the Axis countries and their allies to create death rays. For example, Japan developed a concept called "Ku-Go", which used microwaves created in a large magnetron as a weapon.
Dresden, 1945, view from the city hall of the destroyed city
Photo: Wikipedia Commons / Deutsche Fotothek
Meanwhile, the Nazis developed two projects, one of which was led by researcher Schibold, involved in the creation of a particle accelerator and beryllium rods. A second project, led by Dr. Rolf Wideröe, led to the creation of the Dresden Laboratory of Plasma Physics, until it was bombed in February 1945. In April of the same year, when the war was drawing to a close, the device was taken into custody by the US Army.
On January 7, 1943, engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla died in his room at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan. Tesla was rumored to have a scientific article that provided the most complete description of the death ray, and these documents were seized by the American military for military advantage.
Examples in science fiction
Blasters and other examples of directed energy weapons have become commonplace in science fiction for over a century. One of the earliest examples came from H. G. Wells' seminal book, The War of the Worlds, which features Martian war machines using death rays. However, the first use of this term was noted in the work of Victor Emmanuel Russo "Messiah from the Cylinder" (1917).
Blasters, or beam pistols, also appeared regularly in comics such as Buck Rogers (1928) and Flash Gordon (1934). In Alfred Noyes' novel The Last Man (1934), the death ray, developed by a German scientist named Murdoch, unleashed a global war and virtually destroyed the human race.
HG Wells' 1898 novel War of the Worlds about the Martian invasion uses alien machines that use heat rays to spread panic
Photo: Henrique Alvim Correa (1906)
The concept of the blaster was introduced by Isaac Asimov in the Founding series, which described a nuclear powered pocket weapon that fires energy particles. In Frank Herbert's Dune, energy weapons took the form of continuous laser beams, which became obsolete after the invention of the Holtzmann Shield.
According to Frank Herbert, the interaction of the blaster shot and the force of the shield resulted in a nuclear explosion, which usually killed both the shooter and the target. Additional examples of death rays can be found in any sci-fi franchise, from phasers in Star Trek and lasers in Star Wars to ray guns mounted on spaceships.
Modern development
In terms of actual application, there have been many attempts to create directed energy weapons for offensive and defensive purposes. For example, the development of the radar before World War II was the result of a search for the use of directed electromagnetic energy, in the case of radio waves.
In the 1980s, US President Ronald Reagan proposed the Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative. According to this program, space-based X-ray lasers could destroy intercontinental ballistic missiles in flight. During the war in Iraq, the US military used electromagnetic weapons, including high-power microwaves, to disable and destroy Iraqi electronic systems.
Artistic Concept of Space Laser Satellite Defense System
Photo: USAF
On March 18, 2009, the American military-industrial corporation Northrop Grumman announced that its engineers in Redondo Beach had successfully built and tested an electric laser capable of producing a 100-kilowatt beam of light powerful enough to destroy cruise missiles, artillery, missiles and mortar shells. And on July 19, 2010 at the Farnborough Airshow, an anti-aircraft laser called the "Close Action Laser Weapon System" was presented.
In 2014, the US Navy made headlines with reports that its AN / SEQ-3 (or XN-1 LaWS) laser weapon system, a directed energy weapon, was designed for use on military vessels. Allegedly, the purpose of this weapon is defensive, designed to blind enemy sensors at low radiation intensity and for firing at unmanned aerial vehicles at high radiation intensity.
Also known is the "Active Denial System", which uses a microwave source to heat water in the skin at the target, thereby causing physical pain. The concept is currently being developed by the USAF and Ratheon, a US defense contractor, as a riot control tool.
Another type of directed energy weapon is the Dazzler, which uses infrared or visible light to temporarily blind an enemy. Targets can be people or their sensors (especially in the infrared range). Emitters are usually lasers (hence the term "laser-dazzler") and can be portable or mounted on the outside of vehicles (as with the Russian T-80 and T-90 tanks).
PHASR (Personal Stopping and Irritating Rifle) is a prototype of a non-lethal laser blinding weapon developed by the USAF
Photo: USAF
An example of the former is the PHASR, a prototype non-lethal laser blinding weapon developed by the USAF. Its purpose is to give infantry or other military personnel the ability to temporarily disorient and blind the target without permanent damage.
Blinding laser weapons were banned by the UN Blinding Weapons Ordinance in 1995. However, the provisions of this protocol do not apply to directed energy weapons that only cause temporary blindness.
We have come a long way, since then the blaster has become a household name. At this rate, who knows what will be invented in the future? Will Nikola Tesla's Dream of the Death Ray Come True? Will we see directed energy weapons in Earth orbit, or will portable lasers become the backbone of military forces and space travel? Hard to say. We can all be sure that truth is more incredible than fiction!