Provided it doesn’t hit a pilot in the eye!
In: 32
The photons fly off into space until they hit something. Most will probably hit dust or droplets in the atmosphere before reaching space, but some will probably leave the solar system.
Laser beams aren’t perfectly focused. They don’t spread out as wide as quickly as a flashlight beam, but they do spread a little over distance. That’s why it doesn’t look like the beam goes on forever. As it gets wider the beam gets less dense until its too spread out to see, but all those photons are still there, flying on until they hit something.
You get arrested for violating FAA rules. Up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Jokes aside, there will be some slight scattering caused by the atmosphere and imperfections in the laster, but the photons will continue on until they hit something, but the circle the laser shines light to will get bigger and bigger over time and it will get harder and harder to detect due to being less and less intense as it spreads out.
Laser pointers are not perfectly straight, especially cheaper ones. So there will be some diffusion over distance. Some will be absorbed by the atmosphere, some will continue spreading out across the universe until the photons are absorbed by something.
It goes a long way into space. It’ll gradually get fainter as some of it is absorbed or diffused by space dust.
There’s actually a mirror on the moon that if you hit at just the right spot the beam will come back to you in 1 or 2 seconds
Assuming absolutely perfect conditions with absolutely no flaws in your laser, the light gets spread out and weakened by the inverse square law, which states that intensity is inversly proportional to the square of the distance from a source. Think of it this way: double the distance, and you get four times less power. The farther the light gets from it’s source, the weaker light gets until it would not be discernable from other light sources. The photons themselves, however, would continue to travel until they hit something that absorbs it.
And, since I feel like someone will say something about this, I’d like to mention that light and radio waves are basically the same thing, which is electromagnetic radiation. Light is RF at a really high frequency, so any laws that affect radio waves also affect light.
pretty simple. a laser pointer isn’t nearly as “collimated” as industrial lasers. collimation is essentially focusing the light to a very narrow cylindrical shape with most of the light having the same polarization. because it’s not “focused” the beam has more of a cone shape and gets wider with distance. also, the air has water value in it which further diffuses the light.
so the answer is: it fades and is ultimately scattered by the atmosphere. however, it’s still a laser and does have a very very narrow beam, so it can go hundreds of feet and still maintain a lot of intensity.
I think about this sometimes. I shined a laser pointer into the first night sky once as a teenager. That light is now like 15 plus light years away still flying through space. Crazy.
Also it doesn’t matter if you shine it up there at night or during the day, results are the same as far as I know
You’ll likely alert a hostile alien civilization to our presence and result in the fall of humanity. Just don’t do it.
It goes into space, and if you’re not lucky it will blind a passing UFO, who will then know we are here and will come down to do very bad things to us. So, don’t do that.
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