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The world's most powerful laser, which can simulate the energy force of a hydrogen bomb and the sun, has been built in the US.
Built in California and measuring the size of a football pitch, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the culmination of more than 10 years of work, at a cost of nearly £2.5bn.
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are hoping a series of experiments will allow it eventually to mimic the heat and pressure found at the heart of the sun.
NIF consists of 192 separate laser beams, each of which is programmed to travel 1,000ft in one-thousandth of a second to converge simultaneously on a target the size of a pencil eraser
Source: Americal builds worlds most powerfull laser
The laser "will be a cornerstone" of the weapons stewardship programme," said Thomas D'Agostino, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-independent arm of the Energy Department which oversees nuclear weapons programmes.
"It's now operational," Mr Moses said. "The lasers are there. The targets are there, and we've proven the optics. But now the proof is in the shooting. We've got to put all this together and shoot the targets. It's the first time anyone has ever done experiments at this scale."
Originally posted by thisguyrighthere
I hope they use it to hold ransom the world for a million dollars!!
Originally posted by stumason
The lasers are indeed powerful, giving out more wattage than the entire US generating capacity, but they only fire for a few billionths of a second, so their actual power output is quite low.
There is already work going ahead in Europe to take this tech to the next level. NIF is like a demonstrator, showing that laser initiated fusion is able to produce more power than it consumes. If successful, then the Europeans will build a reactor capable of igniting many fuel pellets a second to produce a constant stream of power, as opposed to NIF which can only ignite one fuel pellet evey few hours.
Rest assured that the military will already have had access to this laser tech long ago and if they had a use for it, they'd already be working on it.
Just like the LHC, there is nothing to fear from NIF.
Originally posted by 38181
Originally posted by thisguyrighthere
I hope they use it to hold ransom the world for a million dollars!!
There working on breeding the worlds largest Shark to mount the Laser on then will hold the world ransom!
SHARKS WITH LASER BEAMS!!
[edit on 31-3-2009 by 38181]