Bwahahahahahaha!
Agreed 
What I meant was could the same energy density of that laser but not a laser itself (think something like a football area of light compressed into a the size of 1 square cm) would it do the same job?
Hmm… Sunlight is ~1360 w/m^2 and a football/gridiron field is ~2,585 M^2, so… That’s about 3.516 megawatts brought to bear on 1 square cm.
According to Wolfram Alpha, 3.516 MW/cm^2 is
≈ 0.4× typical laser irradiance used for plasma production
≈ 4× needed for material vaporization
≈ 40× used for material hardening
In raw wattage, it’s ≈ 0.003x the power needed to activate a Flux Capacitor…
So, yep you’re going to get rid of that rust… microseconds before iron or steel would melt. 
Link to the Wolfram Alpha calculation used radiance temperature of 3515600 watts/cm^2 - Wolfram|Alpha
EDITED: Whoops! Someone is bound to point out I left out time – all those units are “per second.”
6 Likes
Thanks for this. I was getting lost without a real-world reference!
7 Likes
I was torn between that and 86,600 Pirate Ninjas…
8 Likes
Ooooer, better get an Arduino to control all that energy. (per second)
3 Likes
Watts are simply Jules/second when you say W for Watts the time (seconds) is part of the definition. For this group, I doubt it was necessary to say “per second”. 
- Rich
2 Likes
ROFL! That caught my eye when it flashed up. 
5 Likes
What…someone’s flashing?
4 Likes
Everyone flashes…
(I haven’t bothered to turn off Notifications.)
4 Likes