Laser

The laser is a block used to mine blocks much more efficiently than pickaxes and other tools. It has 5 input sides for energy, and a laser beam output side. It requires 20 J/t to run - this energy can be provided either by energy cables or by right-clicking it with a battery. When not recharging with a battery, it needs a redstone signal to be instructed to pull energy, or energy can be pushed to it directly, e.g. coming from a dynamo.

Either way, when it gets 20 J, it casts a 3x3 laser beam (with the laser block being at the bottom of that rectangle) from its output side, which goes up to a maximum distance of 64 blocks, and when it hits a block (or a 3x3 group of blocks), they break, dropping to the ground. The blocks drop unharmed; that is, if it hits a stone, stone falls out, not cobblestone. This is useful because it can be used to directly extract, for example, a diamond ore and macerate it to get 2 diamonds instead of 1.