Playing 5. 42, I SM'd a ruin on a planet in Alpha Centauri for my engineers to have something to do, I recovered a research facility with technical details for something called Advance 10CM Laser, after researching it it appears to create a laser about 1/4 again as powerful and long ranged as the normal 10 CM laser.
Has anyone else run across this thing? It also opened up a new tech tree for advanced lasers, one for every size it seems.