energy weapons

[Guest zahgooey]

My main question:

 

I'm interested to know what types of energy ( electromagnetic / EM ) weapons exist or are feasibly and what their limitations are?

 

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It's very difficult to find a concise run down of all the directed energy weapons.

 

Specifically I'm interested in a weapon that would be capable of damaging soft tissue underneath the skin while leaving no or few marks ( no burns ) on the skin surface. Is that even possible?

 

The only energy weapons I'm aware of that might be able to do this are microwave based. The problem is you'd need a large amount of energy to overcome the inverse square law. A laser would do damage to the surface of the skin, but a weak enough and diffuse enough microwave would do less damage and could possibly heat up the tissue underneath. Am I correct?

 

The only explicit information I've found on the topic of directed energy weapons is as follows:

 

I've heard or the 95Ghz microwave active denial system that the US is experiementing with. It can penetrate a few millimeters into the skin and cause it to heat up.

 

I've also heard of HERF weapons which are microwave based but mostly used for disabling electronics.

 

Then there are lasers but I'm not interested in them since they would cause noticable damage to the skin surface before doing any damage to tissue underneath.

 

I also found this URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_Energy_Weapons

[timo]

Specifically I'm interested in a weapon that would be capable of damaging soft tissue underneath the skin while leaving no or few marks ( no burns ) on the skin surface. Is that even possible?

I´d be interested in a practical use of such a device that would be even remotely moral.

[Guest zahgooey]

I´d be interested in a practical use of such a device that would be even remotely moral.

 

Well I read on one site about HERFs that they can be used to break up kidney stones.

[timo]

Ok, in this case:

 

There is probably a lot of medical research going on that focusses on depositing lots of energy in a small target area within the human body.

One I know of is a collaboration between the GSI (german abreviation for "company for heavy ion research") and the medical faculty of the university of Heidelberg (google for "gsi heavy ion research cancer treatment"). Another method which afaik has an even better potential for targetting small areas is using neutrons. But they do have the disadvantage that they are not as easy to control as charged ions.

If I remember correctly, electromagnetic radiation -which currently is most common in cancer treatment- has a very bad profile of energy distribution/distance travelled which makes it a bad choice in terms of that. On the advantageous side, EM radiation is much easier to create.

 

Sry, but your initial post really didn´t sound as if you were interested in helping people (actually, I´m still not convinced).