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Re:Directed Energy Planetary Defense and Relativistic Probes by marcosdumay on Friday January 08, 2016 @01:24PM (#10866968)
Boiling off == vaporized (ok pedantically, boiling off -> vaporized, but not the other way around).

The Sun only does that on icy rocks, and when they are near. Lasers can (in theory) do that on icy rocks that are much further away.

Re:Directed Energy Planetary Defense and Relativistic Probes by sandworm101 on Friday January 08, 2016 @01:47PM (#10867175)
In space it often isn't so much boiling (liquid+heat=gas) as sublimation (solid+energy=gas). Sublimation can, weirdly, occur well below the freezing/boiling point. That one lone cosmic ray can heat a single molecule of water enough to cast it into space as a gas ... all in an environment where the average temp is well below freezing points. Temperatures in vacuum are strange.