Fun idea to think about :

[William Gaatjes]

We have electric discharge arcs that produce sounds. There are lot of youtube movies about it.

But none that actually can produce an image for as far as i know. Or is there ? That would be fun and provide great insight on how to control an electric discharge arc and the resulting short lived plasma. To be able to direct that electrical discharge to create a simple wire image. For example a smiley. But in a dynamic way, not a static way. That is no different then a singing fish on the wall, it will get boring if you do not add tricks to it. From there on, go 3D. Imagine how handy that would be... Being able to control plasma from a large electric discharge in a x,y,z manner...

 

[Murloc]

uhm yeah it would be interesting, but I don't see how you can control how an electric arc goes through space...
Also needing a starting point and an ending point for the arc limits the images you can create.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Perhaps it is indeed more handy to start with a static image.
Perhaps i was a little to enthusiastic. Radiowaves can do it, but we need radiowaves in the Ghz range and with power. And current state of technology is not able to create 3 Radiowave beams that focus as well as lasers do.

With 3 high power pulsed lasers it can be done. I think there was also once a research project to guide a lightning discharge by making use of a laser. It seems an idea that exists for a few decades. But now the technology is more or less here. Using lasers together with magnetic fields to create a plasma channel instead of magnetic fields alone might also be already researched.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I had to think that with the speed of the discharge( we are talking atom size timings here), at least 2 sets of 3 lasers would be needed. But i would think more sets. Aiming and focusing on a x,y,z point , charging and re-positioning. The reaction of a discharge is way to fast to control with 1 set of 3 lasers. A multiple set of N * (3 lasers) would really be needed.

It is not much different as for example a 1 Ghz range digital oscilloscope where there is really 8 analog to digital converters running at a "merely" 250Mhz (Nyquist)but sequentially sampling the signal one a/d converter after another a/d converter. When the jitter between each conversion can be controlled this works great.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I was thinking that such a channel might be handy in situations where one would need to transport a large current but cannot make use of super conductors in combination with extreme cooling systems.