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    Senior Member Syme's Avatar
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    Did I say something to piss you off? I'd be happy to have your input here, you almost certainly know more about some of this stuff than I do. I explained my understanding of collimation, but also freely admitted that it's a layman's understanding and I could easily be wrong. It sounds like you are telling me that laser beams do in fact de-collimate over distances. Is this correct? I did not know that but certainly don't pretend that means it isn't true.

    And yes, I know that "raser" would indeed be the proper name for an RF maser. Along with grasers and irasers and all that. But in practice you are much more likely to see an RF maser called just that, an RF maser, rather than a "raser" (as far as I can tell it's rare for anyone to actually use those frequency-range-specific laser terms). I don't know anything about the wavelength range of RF masers; if you do, please tell me. I said what I said because I do know that there are RF masers, distinguished from 'normal' masers because they emit in what's normally considered the true radio spectrum rather than microwaves, HF radio though it may be. You asked about rasers, I told you that. If you had meant "rasers operating below a certain frequency", you should have said so.

    EDIT: Also, if you poke around on google a bit, you will find plenty of serious discussions about the advantages of using lasers for interstellar communication.
    http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1992lbsa.conf..637S
    http://www.coseti.org/ross_02.htm
    http://oreilly.com/catalog/alien/chapter/ch07.html

    In fact apparently there is a whole parallel SETI effort, called OSETI, focused on looking for optical communications from other star systems instead of radio signals. Again, the lasers considered are usually actually visible-light lasers, so the problems of making a raser that operates on long wavelengths is probably irrelevant.
    Last edited by Syme; 01-31-2010 at 10:06 AM.

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