Laser Beams Deflected Off of Nothing but Air for First Time Ever in Breakthrough Patent Pending Process - The Debrief::An international team of scientists report that they have successfully used acoustics to deflect laser beams in an engineering first.
Fun fact, if sound travelled through space, the sun would be as loud as a jackhammer everywhere on earth. Second fun fact, due to the fact that we evolved on earth you wouldve evolved to not be able to hear that frequency.
considering the lab experiment with just one laser required a sound level of about 140 decibels that consume 20 gigawatts, I don't think holodecks are going to be a practical device.
Great points, but you know how things go. Proof of concept is a bloated laboratory implementation, then the tech gets smaller and more efficient over time. Next thing you know the sound is outside of human hearing range and the laser projector is fitted to a drone.
It was the laser that's 20 gigawatts, according to the article, which is notable because such a laser is hard to redirect.
As for the viability of holodecks... Obviously the rest of your points are still valid, but one can only hope that someday we'll figure something out, the technology being impossible/unviable right now doesn't mean it'll stay that way. And this seems to show a theoretical possibility of manipulating light mid-air in the necessary way.
Doesn't need to be air "in space", there just needs to be air somewhere between the laser weapon and whatever it is you don't want the weapon to destroy...
... although it'd probably be easier to use a mirror. Maybe one pointing directly at the person holding a laser weapon. ;-)