• Question: Theoretically, can lasers penetrate anything?

    Asked by ZombieBomb to Connor, Jillian, Lidunka, Sarah, Steven on 18 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Steven Thomson

      Steven Thomson answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      Not at all! Lasers are just light – very bright, focused light, but still just light. If something is reflective enough, the light will just bounce right off. If something is designed to absorb light, then it’ll just get soaked up and dissipated as heat in the material.

      Really strong lasers can burn holes in most things, and even set things on fire with the reflections, but there’s nothing I know of that says a laser could theoretically go through absolutely anything at all.

    • Photo: Jillian Scudder

      Jillian Scudder answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      Lasers themselves can be quite powerful, but they are blocked or reflected by anything that’s particularly dense or reflective at the wavelength of the laser! You need really high energy particles (much more energetic than lasers) to get through very dense things.

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