2012 got me no Hugo nomination in 2013

[james_davis_nicoll]

But you know what it did get me? From Rapture of the Nerds:

It’s called a Nicoll-Dyson beam—a laser weapon powered by a star—and just one of them is capable of evaporating an Earth-sized planet a thousand light-years away in half an hour flat.

So there's that. (it takes a week to evaporate an Earth-sized world with the combined power of a Sun-like star, boo hiss, but to make up for it the range is more like one million light-years)

Comments

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

What would be its effect on an existing civilization?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

"Reach out and touch someone."

But the arXiv paper describes an interstellar radar whose Earth intensity is 10% of insolation over its ground source, 10,000 km2? "Not immediately destructive to airplanes or birds." The paper fails to mention dispersion that I see but certainly there will be some. So probably a minor annoyance at most.

Also, cost $20 trillion. I'm impressed to find a case where imaging looks more expensive than sending an interstellar probe, or even several probes. Still faster, though.