Gee. I walk away from the net for a few days to do some work outside in the big blue room, and come back to a big kerfluffle.... on boing boing? With conspiracy theories and all???

I'm heading back to the big blue room with my kids. We're launching model rockets-- more worthy of time and attention than worrying about who did what to who, causing what manner of hurt feelings, etc, etc, ad nauseam, und so weiter.

On second thought, my son wants to try and talk to people on the radio tonight. We'll be on 10 and 20 meters, having a blast.

I sincerely hope all you take the opportunity to step away from the computers and do something fun and entertaining, personally rewarding, or the like--- life's too damn short to take this stuff seriously.

Antinous-

Drop some chalk dust in front of a laser pointer sometime-- you'll notice the light is scattered off the small particles of chalk as they pass through the laser beam, reflected in all different directions.

The same general principle is at work when you're using a green laser outside to designate astronomical objects to others--- as particulate matter impinges on the laser beam, it reflects it in all directions.

Milliwatt for milliwatt, green lasers appear much brighter than red lasers because the human eye is *MUCH* more sensitive to green light. ( I forgot the difference, and I don't have my Optics notes handy to check. )