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You know to me the only reason to use lasers in the future as oppessed to more conventional weapons would be because of shields. use the lasers to take down shields then spray and pray with missiles and bullets (probally the mechwarrior in me lol) also sinse a laser beam or even a laser pulse would move at the speed of light it would be inpossible to dodge the actual shot, if you were to try to dodge it would have to be before the triggers pulled. Also i once watched on science channel about how to build your own light saber, and it is realisticly possible in the near future to build one of close faxcimily, it would be plasma based though. But the relavent part is nano technology can be used to make the power source, by making basicly millions of miniture battaries and capaciters. of course this technology currently needs 0 gravity enviroment to create, but hey they are in the future in space. But still lasers are very ineffecient weapons. I much prefer the basic troop weapons of the starcraft universe marines the inpaler rifle.

 Psienesis wrote:

And several other sources claim they're recoiless. So we attribute that to the GW 'unreliable narrator', along with the 'great gory mess' because other authors describe it as a 'distinctive through and through wound' that bleeds very little due to the cauterization. So, we try try to find common elements Universally, they make a hole in someone, so this gives us a starting point,.

You could attribute it to that, but you'd be wrong to do so. You're cherry-picking data to make it conform to the idea that you can quantify how it functions while ignoring all of the additional data that doesn't fit with your hypothesis. That's simply bad science.

A laser 'beam' firing for 50 milliseconds would appear to be a 'pulse' or 'bolt' to the naked eye, assuming it was visible, so claiming it's not a laser beam because someone 'sees' it not being a beam does not actually mean it's not a beam.

Except they can and do deflect off certain metal surfaces, and are described as a ball or short rod of light bouncing around in the air, and characters can and do dodge them. Can't dodge a beam by weaving around it.

But you could dodge the actual pull of the trigger giving the illusion that your dodging something that moves at the speed of light.

 Archonate wrote:
I can tell you guys that in surgery, electrocautery has two different settings: cut, and coagulate. Coag is used to quickly cauterize bleeders without doing excessive damage to surrounding tissue. The cut setting is more intense and is used like a knife to cut through tissue (muscle, fat, fascia, etc.). It does not cauterize very effectively as it's cutting.
The scalpel is typically only used to cut skin (because skin blisters under cautery and would ruin the incision, making suturing ugly.) Although, there is a more expensive alternative called a Plasma Knife which can cut skin without blistering and, in fact, does equivalent residual tissue damage to the scalpel's mechanical crush zone, while cauterizing. But as far as I've seen, surgeons still prefer the bovie for faster, more wide-spread cauterization.

What I'm saying is that despite what light sabers show us, cutting through tissue with heat is not necessarily going to effectively cauterize at the same time. Certainly not the larger blood vessels in any case.

Unless a light saber is basicly a handle that when turned on releases a super tough heat resistent nano carbon tube filled with plasma, then in fact it would burn and cauterize very effectivly. It would basicly make it a industrial grade blow torch in the shape of a sword.

 Archonate wrote:

 starraptor wrote:

 Archonate wrote:
I can tell you guys that in surgery, electrocautery has two different settings: cut, and coagulate. Coag is used to quickly cauterize bleeders without doing excessive damage to surrounding tissue. The cut setting is more intense and is used like a knife to cut through tissue (muscle, fat, fascia, etc.). It does not cauterize very effectively as it's cutting.
The scalpel is typically only used to cut skin (because skin blisters under cautery and would ruin the incision, making suturing ugly.) Although, there is a more expensive alternative called a Plasma Knife which can cut skin without blistering and, in fact, does equivalent residual tissue damage to the scalpel's mechanical crush zone, while cauterizing. But as far as I've seen, surgeons still prefer the bovie for faster, more wide-spread cauterization.

What I'm saying is that despite what light sabers show us, cutting through tissue with heat is not necessarily going to effectively cauterize at the same time. Certainly not the larger blood vessels in any case.

Unless a light saber is basicly a handle that when turned on releases a super tough heat resistent nano carbon tube filled with plasma, then in fact it would burn and cauterize very effectivly. It would basicly make it a industrial grade blow torch in the shape of a sword.

Your abundant use of the word 'basically' betrays the fictitious substance of your point.

Philosophical conjectures aside, I'm talking about something real as a comparison for how something hypothetical might work.

In surgery, for cutting, a continuous single frequency sine wave is often employed. Rapid tissue heating leads to explosive vaporization of interstitial fluid. If the voltage is sufficiently high (> 400 V peak-to-peak) the vapor sheath is ionized, forming conductive plasma. Electric current continues to flow from the metal electrode through the ionized gas into the tissue. Rapid overheating of tissue results in its vaporization, fragmentation and ejection of fragments, allowing for tissue cutting. The vaporization is why a hotter electrode doesn't cauterize.

For coagulation, the average power is typically reduced below the threshold of cutting. Typically, sine wave is turned on and off in a rapid succession. The overall effect is a slower heating process, which causes tissue to coagulate. (Coagulate = cauterize, btw.)

You do relize we are all debating a fictious weapon so i dont get your point. Also I did not mean to say that was what a light saber was (a light saber is basicly a handle that when turned on releases a super tough heat resistent nano carbon tube filled with plasma) what i meant was that is my theory on how to make one with modern day materials. And that if that was how it was made then it would indeed cauterize a wound since plasma is just super heated gas.

Umm pretty sure a lasgun is not based on any existing technology whatso'ever. The creaters of the concept just says its a laser, they did no reaserch on how lasers work in real life and frankly probaly did not care so they make up a few turms and says it does stuff that they think lasers should do from watching old space movies. And also you have to think about this in 40k no one realy knows what most of the tech does in the imperium. They may call it a laser but for all we know it could be concentrated microwave beames. Because they most likely dont know themselves. Than you have to think about this even in modern day earth lots of things names are actually misnomers and are not actually technicly what they are called its just eaiser sometimes to call it an apple sometimes when its really a melon.

 Happyjew wrote:
Of course, there is the fact that if a lasgun is a laser it does not follow the rules for laser for example:

It is slower than the speed of light
It is visible in a vacuum

It could be similar to SW Turbolasers in which case a laser is used to stimulate whatever it is that is shot (Tibanna Gas in SW).

QFT

And this is what i mean the people of games workshop created a gun that shoots "lasers" but they have no actual knowledge of how lasers work so the lasgun may be called a laser but cant be from every fluff and game play angle they have ever released of its inner workings. A laser would move at the speed of light which means it can not be seen or dodged, if it was ever weaponized in the future it would still be more expensive no matter what kind of tech they have than to arm them with conventional weapons i.e. slug throwers. Which means either games works shop has no clue what they are talking about or they made the imperium like are modern day goverment who would spend $50,000 on a hammer instead of $5 to do the same thing. And when you are talking about billions of hammers well thats just a waste and no wonder they are losing to the dark powers that be.

But maybe someday there might actually be something like a lasgun for real who knows? I mean 40,000 leagues under the sea was published in 1870 way before they actually knew how to make anything like a nuclear sub. But you know what if they ever did make a lasgun that worked I would rather take couple of flashlights and tape them together because then it would be the same str but twin-linked.