Thanks, I had my Solar Mass wrong. It is compression to within a 3 km radius for the formation of an event horizon.
But the question I am raising above has to do with the amount of gravitational deflection necessary in order to cause "focusing" of the laser. I gather the suggestion is being made that about a 30g-field in a localized several-mm radius volume would be sufficient to cause the necessary deflection (the bending of starlight around the edge of Sol at 28g being the precedent).
But the point I am making is that for an approximately solar mass object, 30g is the field-strength due to curvature at a radius of approximately 500,000 km from the center of gravitation. If you were to compress the sun to within its own Schwarzschild radius of 3km, the field (using a Classical Newtonian approximation) at just above the event horizon would be about 1.5 x 10^12 g,
NOT 30g.
Given the following:
- Classical Gravitation: [ g = GM/r^2 ]
- Schwarzschild Radius: [ r = 2GM/c^2 ]
If I assume that my focusing area has a radius of 1.0 mm and an effective field strength of 30g at that radius, the
effective (i.e. equivalent) mass necessary to produce such a source of gravitation at a 1.0 mm radius would be 4.5 x 10^6 kg, or 4500 tonnes. That is definitely the equivalent of collapsed matter much denser than degenerate white-dwarf matter, but likewise much less dense than neutronium (approximately one-millionth the density).
The Schwarzschild Radius of a 4.5 x 10^6 kg mass is ~ 6.67 x 10^(-21) meters, or ~ 6.67 x 10^(-18) mm. So unless my Newtonian approximations above are significantly divergent from Einsteinian reality, we should still be well above the Schwarzschild Radius. So no black hole necessary.
So the question is whether or not it is possible to artificially generate such an intense field as specified above for the split second that is contemporaneous with the laser-pulse.
ADDENDUM: But all of this is really moot for the OTU, as it is a long established presupposition of the game-universe that artificial "pseudo-gravity" is "a thing" that can produce a force that acts upon mass-energy (which will include the mass-energy of the photon) as evidenced by the effect of artificial gravity plating in spacecraft. Such fields do not require either the production or compression of any mass whatsoever
*. Since artificial pseudo-gravity can produce fields up to at least 6g (or 9g if you are using T5 assumptions), then the question is simply whether or not you can briefly project a highly localized version of this field that is 3-5 times the aforementioned magnitude (perhaps from two projectors producing an overlapping "node" of enhanced magnitude similar to nuclear damper tech).
* Consider that a 1g field would normally require the mass-equivalent (i.e. "gravitational charge") of the entire Earth at about 6300 km distance from the center of gravitation to produce thru normal gravity, but pseudo-gravity can produce a similar effect over short distances without any "mass-charge" at all as a field-source.