Astronomy:Sun gun
The sun gun or heliobeam (German: Sonnengewehr) is a theoretical orbital weapon, which makes use of a concave mirror mounted on a satellite, to concentrate sunlight onto a small area at the Earth's surface, destroying targets or killing through heat and burning.
History
In 1929, the German physicist Hermann Oberth developed plans for a space station from which a 100-metre-wide concave mirror could be used to reflect sunlight onto a concentrated point on the earth.[1]
Later, during World War II, a group of German scientists at the German Army Artillery proving grounds at Hillersleben began to expand on Oberth's idea of creating a superweapon that could utilize the sun's energy.[2] This so-called "sun gun" (Sonnengewehr) would be part of a space station 8,200 kilometres (5,100 mi) above Earth. The scientists calculated that a huge reflector, made of metallic sodium and with an area of 9 square kilometres (900 ha; 3.5 sq mi), could produce enough focused heat to make an ocean boil or burn a city.[1] After being questioned by American officers, the Germans claimed that the sun gun could be completed within 50 or 100 years.[1][3] Evidence that Japan was also attempting to develop a death ray was uncovered by American forces.[4][5][6]
With the deployment and validation of satellite mega-constellations, their use as a sun gun has also been proposed. Instead of a vast individual mirror, hundreds of low cost reflectors could in theory be synchronized to concentrate solar irradiance and aim it at a target.[7]
See also
- Archimedes' heat ray, a purported device from antiquity which weaponized the sun's rays
- 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper in London whose concave reflecting face generated extremely high temperatures - hot enough to melt plastic - by reflecting the sun's rays
- Concentrated solar power
- Solar furnace
- Space-based solar power
- Space mirror (climate engineering)
- Znamya (satellite) (Not intended for use as a weapon, but similar concept of "mirrors in space" )
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Science: Sun Gun". Time Magazine. July 9, 1945. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,852344-1,00.html.
- ↑ Burke, Myles (February 3, 2025). "'It could illuminate an area the size of a football stadium': How Russia launched a giant space mirror in 1993". https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250130-how-russia-launched-a-giant-space-mirror-in-1993.
- ↑ "The German Space Mirror". Life Magazine: 78. July 23, 1945. https://books.google.com/books?id=30kEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA78.
- ↑ "Japanese Had 'Death Ray' In Stage of Development" (in en-US). The New York Times. 1945-10-07. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/1945/10/07/archives/japanese-had-death-ray-in-stage-of-development.html.
- ↑ Fanning, William J. (2010). "The Historical Death Ray and Science Fiction in the 1920s and 1930s". Science Fiction Studies 37 (2): 253–274. ISSN 0091-7729. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25746409.
- ↑ Grunden, Walter E. (2005). Secret weapons and World War II: Japan in the shadow of big science. Modern war studies. Lawrence, Kan: University Press of Kansas. pp. 110-116. ISBN 978-0-7006-1383-0.
- ↑ Shiga, David. "Space mirrors could create Earth-like haven on Mars" (in en-US). https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10573-space-mirrors-could-create-earth-like-haven-on-mars/.
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