Tom Mahood wrote some interesting well-researched posts about the possibility that alleged "UFOs" seen over area 51 may have been the result of proton beam testing.
This is a good starting point [0].
The page also links to several later updates.
Now send some lightning through it, and you have the ability to print magnetic coils in midair aka force fields.
Make a whole array of that and you have a launch loop without ever having to erect an arc.
Or reduce it in size and print it on demand into the outer layers of a traditional fusion reactor plasma-donut, to dampen minor fluctuations, without constantly modifying the underlying superconducting coils.
Also the stories of strange lights above Area 51 that became so popular. Although that was probably a charged particle beam; high power particle beams have been around longer than high power lasers.
You shine a laser beam in some direction in order to create an image/flashbang/whatever twenty meters away. Why does it ionize the air twenty meters away but not ten meters away (along the same ray from the laser to the projection)?
This page linked earlier [0] relates one possibility to the 'Bethe formula', where depending on the energy of the beam (proton in their example) you can control where the burst appears.
Maybe. But that article is talking about beams of massive particles -- not beams of massless photons, which is what lasers are.
The fact that the particles have mass and decelerate is what produces the sharp drop in velocity: the slower it goes the more it slows down per unit of time or of distance traveled. Like a bullet travelling through water. So you get that nice sharp asymptote in the position-vs-time graph.
I don't think that webpage is applicable to light or other photon beams. Photons can't slow down unless they encounter a change of medium -- but that's basically projecting onto a physical "screen"... the laser operator can't influence the depth position of the screen. But thanks for the link, it's the first time I've seen a "3D projection technology" that had a coherent answer to the depth-control question. Maybe the Navy is using massive-particle beams instead of lasers and the Forbes journalist just doesn't know the difference. Or maybe it's deliberate disinformation, like how fusion weapons were named "hydrogen" bombs.
There are two ways off the top of my head (assuredly there are more): (1) use two lasers; or, (2) the geometry of a laser is hour-glassed shaped, so only the “neck” may have sufficient energy density.
People need to wake up and face the fact that we are being monitored by an alien race. A trained observer and fighter pilot doing exercises off the coast of Santa Barbara has gone on record saying that he saw an alien moving at thousands of miles per hour. The craft actively jammed his radar which is an act of war. The New York Times and other major news outlets have reported on this.
Except the fact that lots of things can move that quickly, like an atmospheric plasma phenomenon. When they say “actively jammed his radar,” all they are saying is that the object emitted a scattered signal of radar light which lots of things could do, including things that don’t have anything to do with sentient life.
Watch "Phenomenon". Many countries have experienced similar issues. Soviet Union was very worried about UFO reports near its nuclear sites. Also the NYT story about the F18s didn't really go into much detail but Mexico also had similar experiences.
A plasma can produce a lot of noise on the RF spectrum. Something of that size and that distance from the surface can clearly jam quite a lot of equipment. I wonder if radio amateurs caught interferences on those days.
This is a good starting point [0]. The page also links to several later updates.
[0] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...