Replacing Traditional Electricity With Laser Power

I ran across this article today and thought it was pretty interesting, albeit a long time in coming. I wonder if the people will ever be able to take advantage of it?

www.ufodigest.com...

A recent laser test at Lawrence Berkelery National Lavoritory was conducted where pulses at the Berkelery Lab Laser Accelerator delivered a petawatt of power once per second. A petawatt is 1015 watts, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 watts about 400 times as much as the combined instantaneous output of all the world s electric plants.

This is impressive to say the least, but the experiment brings to mind why laser technology isn't replacing electricity as the main source of power used in the world.

I also wonder how much the electric companies are going to sell it to us for. It probably won't be available anytime soon. The other thing is, if switching from electricity to laser, would one need to get all new appliances and electric equipment and stuff?

Originally posted by Gridrebel

Lawrence Berkelery National Lavoritory

What is a "Lavoritory"?......I wouldn't take it seriously.

about 400 times as much as the combined instantaneous output of all the world s electric plants.

Interstellar space travel and lightsabres here we come! That's just crazy, the implications for potential use must be staggering.

reply to post by Trueman


Berkeley was misspelled too heh..

www.lbl.gov...

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy


Here. More credible source for it.

newscenter.lbl.gov...

*Side note: this took place on my birthday. Yay me

I'm missing something here.... From the OP article:

Instead of a power generating plant in the traditional sense, which burns coal to produce electricity. It would be possible to use a Collider ( particle accelerator) to produce the laser, and yes, the power already in use could be redirected to the collider in a process of full circle energy production.

(emphasis mine)

How doesn't that violate physics? I'd come up with a design many years ago of a regenerating electricity source for a rolling vehicle. Once it began rolling, the multiplication of generation units should have sustained. People much smarter than I explained that nothing could use what it produced over a length of time and be truly self-sustaining.

How does this differ from that? I'm honestly confused on it and I know we have some intelligent people on ATS with different backgrounds...anyone?

Is this guy for real?

Instead of a power generating plant in the traditional sense, which burns coal to produce electricity. It would be possible to use a Collider ( particle accelerator) to produce the laser, and yes, the power already in use could be redirected to the collider in a process of full circle energy production.

www.ufodigest.com...

I wonder where the electricity to power the accelerator comes from.

Wrabbit2000 found it first. The guy (Tony Elliot) is a bonehead.

Shame this will get snapped up by the military whilst you and I carry on paying ridiculously high prices for electricity and fuel..

Haven't the US military already successfully fueled aircraft mid flight with a laser?

reply to post by Gridrebel


This thread is another perfect example of the scientific ignorance of both the popular press and its readers. Yeah, the laser put out a petawatt. But obviously the author, and those who uncritically comment on the article don't know what a watt is, and think that since the term "watt" was used, it must mean electricity. What ignorance!. A watt is simply a derived unit of power, any power. The electric power lighting your light bulb can be measured in watts, which simply refers to 1 ampere flowing through a potential difference of 1 volt. It can be used to refer to the power of your car engine, or the power of a fist punching a nose. If you're a laborer, you probably average a power output of about 75 watts through the workday, so I guess what this author is advocating is replacing electricity with human labor. But wait - wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?

reply to post by Trueman


I noticed that also and wondered if it was a typo or the whole thing is a crock of #. I am looking into it further.

newscenter.lbl.gov... Laser Achieves World Record Power at One Pulse Per Second

As Berkeley Lab’s laser plasma accelerator project BELLA nears completion, its drive laser has delivered one petawatt – a quadrillion watts – of peak power once each second, a world record for laser performance

It seems legit. And I know very little about electricity. I don't know if someone could use some type of a converter for instance. That's why I asked.

Originally posted by Gridrebel



It seems legit. And I know very little about electricity. I

That seems pretty obvious.

reply to post by Gridrebel

It would take a pretty amazing "converter" to turn the laser beam into electricity. A beam like that would vaporize most anything pretty quickly.

Its initial peak power of one petawatt is twice that of lasers recently said to produce pulses more powerful than that consumed by the entire U.S. “at any instant in time.” “Instant” is the operative word, since the BELLA laser’s average power is just 42.4 watts, about what a typical household light bulb uses. The enormous peak power results from compressing that modest average power into an extremely short pulse.

newscenter.lbl.gov...

That pulse is only 40 femtoseconds long. That's 0.000000000000040 second.

reply to post by Phage


I know even less about lasers. So the converter is out, and it probably won't be used for the masses anyway. Oh well, I got excited there for a bit. Thanks for all the info.

Originally posted by Gridrebel
... delivered a petawatt of power once per second.

And look elsewhere shows that this power was only delivered for 40 femtoseconds each time it pulsed.

A petawatt (10^15) watts, for 40 femtoseconds (10^-15) second tells me that it only averaged (in the long run) an average of 40 Watts.

Interesting, but not what the idiot at ufodigest had in mind (if he has one).

reply to post by Gridrebel

The point is that it does not produce energy but you're right, it wouldn't be of much use for "the masses".

Why not just use Tesla's idea instead of building colliders all over the place.

Wireless energy transfer

reply to post by buster2010

Transmitting electricity through the ground (Tesla's method) is terribly inefficient. That's why we use wire.

reply to post by Phage

The point is that it does not produce energy but you're right, it wouldn't be of much use for "the masses".

What potential application does it have?

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy

Research mostly. A laser based accelerator has good potential for the study of high energy physics.
Possibly industrial uses. Doesn't seem much military use at this point.
techie-buzz.com...