You probably know about small lasers that are only dangerous if you look right into the beam, such as a laser pointer. Although those are considered, lasers, they are not what I am talking about. What I am talking about are lasers that for lack of a better word, destroy things. You may not believe it but these lasers do in fact exist. Aboard some modern day battleships are actual lasers, but not to the extent of Star Wars... How they function as a weapon is relatively simple. They can take down aircraft quite easily by pointing the laser at the jet. More precisely, they point it at a mirror on the jet that then ignites the bottom of the jet into flames. It's really cool to see and there are videos online if you are curious or you don't believe me. Since this technology already exists it begs the question can we take it a step further. Can we turn this into some kind of concentrated shot that can be fired out of say, a rifle.
I really do hope so even if its just for a cool factor at best. But the odds are not in this technologies favor. Think about it, light travels extremely fast, faster than the naked eye can detect. If we created this laser rifle it wouldn't fire cool big red blasts that are observable, the effect would be along the lines of turning a laser pointer on and off again. So there probably won't be a laser rifle that functions like I want it, the answer most likely lies in plasma as it usually does. Tech that could fire a small dose of plasma is definitely more plausible than lasers, and it would undoubtedly be much more effective, and cool.
