Chinese scientists claim they have built a Death Star-inspired beam weapon

On November 24, 2024By Pranco

Remember the moment in “Star Wars” when the Death Star destroys Alderaan? Eight laser beams converge at one point to form a super-powerful laser that destroys the planet. It was a memorable scene that demonstrated the ruthless power of the empire.

Although it is unclear whether they were inspired by the scene, Chinese scientists claim to have created a new type of microwave weapon that combines several powerful electromagnetic waves. They can then concentrate them on a target.

The weapon system consists of multiple microwave-transmitting vehicles deployed at different locations. Each of the vehicles fires microwaves with extremely precise synchronization. These merge into a powerful beam of energy to attack a single target.

This is a lot harder than it seems. Microwaves are narrow beams of energy that must be precisely aligned to then converge. This means that the timing with which they are fired must be controlled to within a millionth of a second.

According to the research team, each microwave vehicle must also be positioned with millimeter accuracy. ChinaBeiDou’s BeiDou satellite navigation system can provide positioning accuracy of up to 1 centimeter, but it still does not meet the requirements of the new weapon system.

To overcome this, laser-guided auxiliary positioning devices were installed on each transmitting vehicle to achieve the positioning system with millimeter accuracy. In addition, the vehicles must be perfectly level. Any changes in the surface will cause the microwave emitters to be misaligned.

The firing synchronization must be within 170 picoseconds (or 170 trillionths of a second). To put this into perspective, an average home computer takes 330 picoseconds to complete one processing cycle.

To overcome this challenge, the scientists connected the transmitting platforms using optical fibers to ensure they were properly synchronized. Each of the weapon system vehicles was also directly controlled by a mobile command center.

According to the South China morning maila scientist involved in the project claimed that the combined power of the converging microwave beams has a combined effect of “1+1>2” – despite such a claim violating the law of conservation of energy. Nevertheless, a powerful combined microwave is more useful than several smaller microwave sources.

Microwaves cannot work over long distances because dust and moisture scatter the waves. This can be countered by increasing power, but this poses significant logistical challenges as batteries currently do not have the energy storage capacity to provide that amount of energy.

It is entirely possible that the Chinese research team was able to realize a convergent microwave weapon system in a controlled environment. However, the real world is much more chaotic, which will pose enormous challenges for any technology that relies on such a high degree of precision.