Reply #61: Yes, I was just being facetious

[daleo]

I guess I tend to agree with other posters, that this whole story is weird. Consider the report of a jetliner being "lasered" at a distance of 14 miles. If you assume a pilot's window is about 2 meters or so, this would be equivalent to "lasering" an object the size of a coin from 2 football fields away. Without a scope, I doubt most people could even see such an object from this distance, let alone point a beam of light at it, hit it, and keep it there for any length of time. So, that seems to eliminate kids with laser pointers, or errant Powerpoint presentations.

Suppose that someone was using a scope and a tripod (I imagine I could construct something like that with my telescope, in principle). It would still be difficult to find an aircraft at that distance and nearly impossible to track it by hand (unless its relative velocity was directly toward you). So, I think you would need some kind of automatic tracking i.e. radar.

And, if terrorists were going to all this trouble, why would they just be shining laser beams into cockpits?

There is just something weird about the whole story - aliens make about as much sense as terrorists, I think.