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Linkedin post screenshot: In the 1985 movie Real Genius, a bunch of slacker physicists--one played by Val Kilmer--accidentally build a space-based laser weapon... and end up hijacking it to pop popcorn. DARPA just did that. Last month, DARAPA's POWER program beamed 800 watts of power over 5.3 miles using a ground-based laser. And yes—they used some of the energy to pop popcorn. Huge credit to: ~ Paul Jaffe, Program Manager at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ~ Raymond Hoheisel at Teravec Technologies, who led the receiver design ~ And the support teams at Packet Digital and Rochester Institute of Technology At strike Labs LLC, we built a calculator to model RF-based wireless power transmission—factoring in distance, humidity, receiver size, beam articulation, and other variables. RF still works for certain use cases—but when it comes to efficiency, lasers win.