finally, laserguns!

["Dude VanWinkle" <dudevanwinkle () gmail com>]

Microwave-oven gun

from: http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10356

You can do a lot of damage with a directed beam of microwave energy.
It can destroy electronics by inducing high voltages in chips and
wires (just as metal objects spark if left in a microwave oven). Such
a beam could also burn a person's skin, or even detonate improvised
explosive devices by exciting unstable chemicals.

A megawatt magnetron is normally needed to make the beam, though, and
these are big and expensive beasts that need water cooling.

However, two inventors from Albuquerque, New Mexico in the US, reckon
there is cheaper way to get the power. Simply gather together a stack
of magnetrons ripped out of consumer microwave ovens, and lock their
output together so that they combine into one coherent beam. What is
more, they say, the trick can be done mechanically.

Microwave magnetrons come with a tube-shaped component that controls
the output signal. The idea is to arrange a dozen or so side by side
and have a small metal plate in front that reflects some of the energy
from each tube back into the mouth of adjacent ones. This should make
all the magnetrons resonate in synchronisation, the inventors reckon.
Three hundred consumer devices, rated at 1 kilowatt each, could
combine to generate megawatt pulses from the back of a mobile
generator.

The only puzzle is why the US government Patent Office has published
an application that might explain to anyone, including terrorists, how
to build such a weapon.

----------------

here is the patent: http://qurl.com/mwdm5

-JP
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