Particle beams – streams of atoms or subatomic particles accelerated to nearly the speed of light – have been the holy grail of space warfare. The idea is simple: fire a tightly focused beam of high-energy particles at an enemy satellite or missile, damaging it through sheer kinetic and thermal energy.
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But turning this vision into reality has remained out of reach. One critical reason is power.
To work, a particle beam weapon needs not just massive amounts of energy, but also extreme precision in how that energy is delivered. In a particle accelerator on board a satellite, electromagnetic fields must “push” charged particles at precise moments as they race through different sections.
These energy pulses must maintain almost perfectly in sync, with errors no more than millionths or billionths of a second – microseconds and nanoseconds, respectively. Otherwise, the beam will lose focus, efficiency will drop and the weapon will fail.
This creates a fundamental engineering dilemma: high power and high precision usually do not go together. Systems that deliver megawatts of power tend to be slow to control and systems that are ultra-precise often cannot handle such huge energy bursts, meaning engineers have had to choose between raw power and fine control – never both.
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However, Chinese scientists say they have cracked this decades-old dilemma.