• Question: do you think that if you fired a laser out into space it would come back and hit you in the back of your head?

    Asked by lordofdeadspace2 to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      No. The beam would keep on travelling away from you forever (or at least until the end of the universe).

    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 30 Jun 2012:

      The beam spreads out as it gets further away, so if it did somehow find its way back to me, it would so spread out that I wouldn’t be able to see it (or it wouldn’t be visible on the back of my head)

    • Photo: Philippa Bird

      Philippa Bird answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      If you fired a laser (that was powerful enough not to spread out too much) forward it wouldn’t travel round the world and hit you on the head because gravity doesn’t bend it. It would exit the atmosphere on a tangent.

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