I'm working on The Last President this morning, rewriting (for the third time) some handwavery about the weapon that could kill the aliens and win the war, if only the heroes can build it in time. (Spoiler alert, the good guys win).

Nobody wants a textbook on masers (Microwave lasers) from me. I don't have the knowledge.

What they want to know is, at their darkest hour, the heroes finally figure out one last desperate chance.

But they also want to feel in their gut that this could really work, that we might save the world. And to give them that, we need just the right dusting of facts. Striking the balance is the hard part. Enough real world stuff to make it believable, but not so much as to make it boring.