One of the super-weapons that is currently being developed is a heat ray, better known as a laser death ray. Long story short, the military wants to turn heat and light into weapons, but a hotel in Las Vegas might have beaten them to it. The Vdara Hotel, a hotel and condo complex in Las Vegas, has portions of its pool deck that are unusable most of the day due to the presence of what is called a death ray: the sun hits the curved hotel, the curves focus the sun’s rays, and certain areas of the pool deck are subject to searing beams of light that melt plastic, start fires, and injure patrons like Bill Pintas, who owns a condo in the building.

“It felt like I had a chemical burn. I couldn’t imagine why my head was burning,” said Pintas. “Within 30 seconds, the back of my legs and back were burning. My first thought was, ‘Jesus, they destroyed the ozone layer!'”

As it turns out, the problem isn’t with the ozone layer, it’s with the shape of the building. Even while it was being constructed, Vdara’s owners, MGM Resorts International, were warned about the potential dangers of the curved building, but they went ahead with it anyway. Even special light-scattering coatings on the windows aren’t solving the problem. Meanwhile, MGM searches for a solution to the burning issue.

“Hotel management is dealing with our corporate designers to find ways to create a little more consistent shade, but pools are tricky,” company spokesman Gordon Absher said. “Building a huge shade structure is not the answer because some people want the sun. And the sun is constantly moving. It’s quite literally an astronomical challenge. We’re looking for an aesthetically pleasing way to balance sun and shade features, a means for us to create more shade on that deck.”