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The secret Nazi plan to blow up cities and boil oceans with a mile-wide 'SUN GUN'
Daily Mail ^ | 2nd April 2013 | Mark Prigg

Posted on 04/02/2013 7:10:34 AM PDT by the scotsman

'It may sound like a something a Bond villain would propose, but these amazing pictures reveal the secret plans drawn up by the German army to create a mile-wide 'space gun' powered by the sun.

The giant mirror could be used to focus the sun on a target - rather like the magnifying glasses often used by children to create fire.

The pictures, from Life magazine in 1945, reveal to its readers how 'U.S. Army technical experts came up with the astonishing fact that German scientists had seriously planned to build a ‘sun gun’.'

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Germany; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: paperclip
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To: spel_grammer_an_punct_polise
I had always been intrigued as a child about little magnifying glasses that would make grass, leaves or twigs catch fire.

If the Germans were thinking of some kind of focused beam or parabolic dish I’m afraid that the concentrated rays of the sun would burn up the parabola.

Just like with the magnifying glass, the concentration of the light doesn't happen at the parabola, it happens at the focal point away from the parabola.

21 posted on 04/02/2013 8:18:33 AM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: baddog 219
Who said it didn’t......

A /s would have spoiled the thought I thought.

22 posted on 04/02/2013 8:25:13 AM PDT by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
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To: the scotsman

Query: I seem to remember that Archimedes did something similar for the Greeks. Help me out here please.


23 posted on 04/02/2013 8:26:03 AM PDT by Jimmy Valentine (DemocRATS - when they speak, they lie; when they are silent, they are stealing the American Dream)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Gives a rather deadly meaning to the old phrase “Rey of sunshine”


24 posted on 04/02/2013 8:26:59 AM PDT by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
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To: the scotsman; Allegra; big'ol_freeper; Lil'freeper; TrueKnightGalahad; blackie; Cincinatus' Wife; ..
Re: The giant mirror could be used to focus the sun on a target

Well, I use my smaller mirror... the same way--

Focusing on... my target!

And unlike them gall durn Nazis, I hit my target... time after time after time--

He does... ya know!

25 posted on 04/02/2013 8:29:11 AM PDT by Bender2 ("I've got a twisted sense of humor, and everything amuses me." RAH Beyond this Horizon)
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To: Leaning Right

Quite correct. Hitler had an unusual fascination, one might say obsession for exotic and strange weaponry.

Hitler’s greatest asset in WWII were the military minds who made up his general staff and his leading panzer commanders-—men whose advice and counsel he routinely ignored-—another major reason Germany lost the war.


26 posted on 04/02/2013 8:34:13 AM PDT by Trapped Behind Enemy Lines
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To: mountainlion
I guess that flying saucer thing did not work out.

That's what They want you to think...

27 posted on 04/02/2013 8:39:36 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: the scotsman

Not to worry. James Bond took care of this problem in “Goldeneye.”


28 posted on 04/02/2013 8:42:28 AM PDT by upchuck (Free Republic: faster than a speeding bullet!)
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To: Bender2

29 posted on 04/02/2013 9:03:10 AM PDT by Old Sarge (We are officially over the precipice, we just havent struck the ground yet...)
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To: Leaning Right

Great point.


30 posted on 04/02/2013 9:46:44 AM PDT by RobO1125 (Conservatives have a diversity of ideas, not simply colors)
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To: babygene

There was a book by an electrical engineer called, “How to Turn A Microwave Oven Into a Ray Gun”.

He used a busted 5KW commercial oven’s innards to set plywood on fire at 500 feet. Boiled a cup of water in 4 seconds.

Just think of what would happen to the operator if the beam reflected back!

I’ll bet this stuff is on YouTube now.


31 posted on 04/02/2013 9:46:49 AM PDT by darth
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To: Trapped Behind Enemy Lines
Hitler had an unusual fascination, one might say obsession for exotic and strange weaponry.

A fascination shared, curiously enough, by Churchill: who spent a remarkable amount of time and energy pursuing sometimes quite bizarre projects - some of which worked, others didn't.

32 posted on 04/02/2013 1:27:48 PM PDT by Winniesboy
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To: staytrue
the sun’s rays are quite diffuse. all spacecraft receive direct sunlight and do not burn up. the parabola would receive diffuse rays and the rays would only be concentrated at the focal point of the lens. only at the focal point will there be burning rays.

Several questions(actually one with several subsets). What is the temp of Mercury's surface? What is the temp of the moon's surface on the sunny side? A parabolic mirror would provide ample temp for burning things. Don't believe it? Buy a reflector telescope and then use the mirror to focus the sun on something flammable, see what happens.

33 posted on 04/02/2013 2:43:53 PM PDT by calex59
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