Talk:Starfire Optical Range

Convergence

Why don't the green beams continue past their point of convergence? What stops them? - Keith D. Tyler ¶ (AMA)

good question, that.

They do continue. Except when they continue in space, you can't see the light. What you are seeing in the picture is some of the laser's light being scattered off the air molecules, dust, pollutants in the atmosphere. Once the beam gets into the vacuum of space, even though the laser light is in the visible wavelength band, you can't see it (although the beam is still there...if you held a movie screen in space you'd see a green dot). Basically, all the science fiction movies you've seen with lasers firing visible light is wrong. First, they wouldn't be firing lasers in the visible spectrum. Second, even if they were, you wouldn't see the laser beam until it reflected or scattered off the target. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.35.154.229 (talk • contribs)

They don't converge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.208.246.15 (talk) 07:37, 30 May 2008 (UTC)