Slashdot Mirror
Building the World's Most Powerful Laser
Bill writes "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories is attempting to create the world's largest laser. The NIF's goal is to focus the laser on a pea-sized hydrogen pellet and result in fusion ignition."
To produce Extremely Large Shark?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There is something for me to see here.
The "Alan Parsons Project"
It may be powerful, but is it readily mountable on a shark's head?
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
Unless its a medical procedure :P
http://www.defense-update.com/directory/THEL.htm
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
..can it blast holes through campus statues, point party goers to an all night swimming pool party with female beauty school students, and cook up a mean 20 ton jiffy pop in my dickhead science instructor's new house?
They finally put in my order! I was about to go someplace else for my "Death Star".
From TFA
The NIF laser "is essential to assessing the potential performance of nuclear weapons," says Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
Naturally I'm depressed that "civilian" research does not get the money which it needs to help solve many pressing problems, but on the other hand if this facility removes the need for live nuclear tests that would be a good thing.
How long this self-imposed testband will last if China or India decide they need to start testing weapons using live tests ?
Absolute statements are never true
then the pea-sized hydrogen pellets have already won.
"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."
Huh. this story looks like its almost exactly what I have on my blog. Anyways, the direct link for the NIF is here.
Just think: it's better than half way to a fusion drive if it all works in 2010.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Just when you get it finished, some rabbit comes and steals the Q36 Explosive Space Modulator, and there is no kaboom.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Funding, and vital tritium pellets, will be provided by a grant from OsCorp?
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
Like creating super-strong alloys? Demolition: melting the buildings instead of wrecking... Or in war: melting holes in enemy tanks. A lot more uses for that super-strong laser than fusion.
NASA has begun work on a replacement for the International Space Station. It is roughly spherical in shape, and resembles the AT&T logo...
#define QUESTION ((bb) || !(bb))
"This is predicted to achieve self-sustaining nuclear fusion reactions, or ignition."
Self-sustaining? Can they turn it off if it starts to get out of control? Amazing stuff, but to some degree a little scary.
Now we just need the world's largest shark!! Muha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
is making so much popcorn the victorian house falls apart
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Do not stare directly at beam. Spontaneous fusion reactions of eyes may result. May also cause temporary blindness.
If NIF achieves fusion ignition, it will for the first time in a laboratory simulate the pressures and heat of a nuclear explosion, allowing nuclear weapons scientists to study the performance and readiness of the country's aging nuclear arsenal without actually detonating a nuclear device.
...and his opinion matters why? Sounds like he's got a giant basis for bias. He continues...
Sounds good to me.
"If Congress knew it would cost $5 billion up front, would they ever have funded it? No way," maintains Christopher Paine, who has monitored NIF's development for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environment advocacy group, and has been one of its sharpest critics.
Paine, who in a critique once dubbed NIF "The Unlovable Laser," maintains that NIF should follow the same path. He says it isn't needed and poses a nuclear proliferation risk because it might make it easier in decades ahead to develop new nuclear weapons, not just maintain existing ones.
Since, every American knows the only use of anything nuclear is to kill people. So now, we take a "reliable" newsource like CNN.com - and not only shred any chance of getting "unbiased" information and toss it in the can.
Also, to contrast that idiots opinion, we get:
The JASONs, a group of scientists frequently called upon to review complex defense or national security issues,
that sounds a LITTLE more relevant, no?
has concluded that NIF "does not represent a significant proliferation risk" and is "fully compatible" with U.S.
I guess this is why I can't appreciate the news for telling me anything new now adays. Someone go develop a computer to report things without bias, then I'll be interested in reading the news.
"And they said I was mad. Pah! Who's mad now?
Fools! I'll destroy them all!
Red Onion
"The NIF laser "is essential to assessing the potential performance of nuclear weapons," says Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. He says the experiments will help determine the effects of aging on warheads and help assure they will work as expected, should they be needed."
Ok. So maybe a few don't work. It really won't matter at that point. As for indiviual performance, so what if the crater is 100 meters less than it should be. This must be one of thoes guys that can say "Surgical Nuclear Strick" with a straight face.
Vol~
Didn't we just hear news that the US wants to move forward with space based weapons?
Oh.My.God. Once the filibuster is abolished, Darth Bush will finally be able to finish his Death Star!!!
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
i think most of what destroys a tank is the rapid decompression caused by the round piercing the armour. the round already on impact shoots a jet of white-hot metal. that hopefully will ignight the amunition inside, but the decompression will kill or damage the people inside. I am not sure that a laser would cause rapid decompression. But i'm not a scientist.
It might classify as the world's most intense laser target, but that's entirely different language.
Fusion ignition is also not the goal (or, for that matter, even the primary goal) of the laser cluster.. The intent is apparently nuclear weapons testing and design. Civilian fusion research is simply a pleasand side effect.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
We're not really talking about a loss of efficiency in these things. The current stockpiles are based on high efficiency cores. We just don't make the "big hunk of uranium" bombs anymore. I would suggest a fascinating site for anyone looking for some good education. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/index.html (Be sure to check out the Castle Bravo test.)
The cores on these things break down rather fast, and they aren't sure-fire to work correctly (or even behave themselves) after sitting on a shelf for decades. If we are going to keep them around, fine, but let's make sure we know what the things will do. Otherwise, get rid of them. There is no better way to cut yourself than working with a dull knife.
The LASER will allow "assessing the potential performance of nuclear weapons" without having to 'test' them.
On the bright side China and India might get cooking on controlled fusion development rather than admit they don't have the smarts to build a BFL (big fine LASER).
Why do they call it fusion "ignition"? Fusing hydrogen nuclei into heavier nuclei, releasing extra energy, bears little physical resemblance to combining oxygen and other atoms by covalent electron shells. Though I guess atomic fission reactions bear little physical resemblance to "chains".
--
make install -not war
I think it is time we demonstrate the full power of this station
...synthesize excited bromide in an argon matrix since its an excimer, frozen in its excited state, as soon as they apply a field, they couple to a state that is radiatively coupled to the ground state and voila! Popcorn for everyone!
into 10.4 kJ UV laser with remaining eyeball.
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Just thought i ring in and say that that movie is fan-freaking-tastic!
And let that be a lesson to any other pea-sized hydrogen capsules that plan to screw with us.
The Crossbow Project. There's no defense like a good offense.
BytesTemplar.com
what if the sharks eat the pea?
Why can't they just heat their peas in the microwave like the rest of us.. :(
Which approach is better?
I can remember first reading about this fusion concept in the "the two faces of tomorrow" from Dark Horse comics. At the time I thought this was just some ancient sci-fi writer's relic idea on how to achieve fusion, we had tokamak (donut) magnetic fusion reactors now. However, after I read about the real life version of it, I first thought WOW and after that I realized that it might be much simpler to ignite a fusion reaction and then back off to let it run wild than to try to contain a fusion reaction in a magnetic bubble. The concept sounds simpler. They're having trouble with manufacturing the hydrogen pellet however, so the tokamak reactor might have a steadier flow of energy coming out of it if they get the concept to work smoothly.
old-energy corporations
Oil, gas and coal companies might not want this to work. I remember the piece in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" about the corporate spy who told his own story. I think he came clean out of guilt over what he'd done in the past. Point I'm trying to make is, there might be a lot of opposition to this project and I hope that they have a lot of security on site. They probably have because this is mostly a military project.
The need for fusion
I do think earth will eventually need fusion reactors, at least the USA needs it. Earth can source it's current level of energy consumption from wind, wave and solar plants if we clad most of the planet with these kind of renewables but it would not be as efficient as a lot of fusion plants. The giant solar tower in Australia and the Sterling motor solar plants look promising but fusion reactors would need less room. A lot of countries just don't have the living space to fill with low producing plants like solar and wind farms. That's what I understand from reading a lot of articles. Fusion would also work on a windless cloudy day and a world filled with fusion reactors would give us a lot more energy to play with than a world filled with other kinds of plants. With oil supplies running out, there will be more wars. To think that politicians ares still fighting over where the ITER tokamak fusion reactor prototype is going to be built (Japan or France) is unbelievable. Every hour they waste could mean a human life they could have saved by preventing an energy war. The bastards responsible should be jailed.
Ridicule of sci-fi
The "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" comic made me realize that we need more science-fiction in our lives. It's weird that sci-fi isn't more popular because it can help us think up solutions to problems that absolutely need to be solved. Humankind would be dead meat if science stopped completely this second. Most people would die without even an animal skin or a house to protect themselves from weather. Fusion is just the continuation of the process that gave us bear skins.
I think it can be explained psychologically. If you don't have knowledge of something like science, it's a good tactic for you personally to ridicule it. That way you can still keep some of your social status because the thing you don't know about is "not important anyway". I hear there are a lot of attacks on science in the USA, are these attackers also renouncing clothes? Ofcourse this phenomenon is everywhere but why is it so big in the US? Not as smart? More fundamentalist? Both? I want every smart person on earth to realize that they are more in the right than fundamentalists who oppose science or stupid people with more determination to make themselves heard. Don't cower, ridicule THEM instead.
- -- Truth addict for life.
Too funny.
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Don't worry - Spider-man will be along in time to save us! And he might even bring a cute girl with him ;) Hey - maybe that's their plan!
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
I don't like the sound of this. And the picture in the article - it is not a moon, Luke.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
And I hear the Fermi labs are working on a mirror to aim this laser.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Who needs nuclear weapons.
pea-sized hydrogen pellet and result in fusion ignition.
The pea however is hidden deep within the caves which were suspected of being Osama's hiding place. Did we mention how powerful the resulting fusion would be? Bin Laden, meet Bin Lasered!
Thanks, I'll be here all week!
I know what I want next Christmas. Screw these new gaming consoles.
[insert witty quote here]
The hydrogen pellet is peaceful! It has no weapons! I'LL TELL YOU WHERE THE REBEL BASE IS!!
Worse, if you need something this big for single-shot tests, pulsed fusion as a power source does not look promising. DoE was talking up pulsed fusion as a power source in the 1970s, and it turned out to be a scam. It was a cover story for a predecessor to this project.
In unrelated news, a small, sub-division of the research group has created a new device called the Flux Capacitor which they claim will allow time travel.
FYI folks, the whole Inertial Confinement Fusion thing is done everyday at the University of Rochester, splitting a massive beam into a Bucky Ball shape is how it's been done for a long time:
http://www.lle.rochester.edu/index.html
They are the scientists that invented it and use it today.
Real Geneous sucked anyways.
It reminded me more of the scene in the second Austin Powers movie where Dr. Evil had to yell at MiniMe to please quit humping the "Giant Laser"
Does it come with Doc Ock-style robot arms to control the fusion?
Austin powers joke -- check
star wars joke -- check
I guess that leaves this...
Aha! 500 terrawatts pphbt you call that a laser? mine needs 1.21 gigawatts! (and it can send you into the past!)
_Real Genius_ was a landmark movie, that made geeks look cool. Not just Val Kilmer (later playing Jim Morrison), but even the really geeky geeks were heroic, and even got laid. It was totally sympathetic to geek passions, and funny enough to get normals to like the movie geeks. It was the geek _Blackboard Jungle_.
--
make install -not war
fry my balls here in San Francisco!
Or maybe some guy in China...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Some of the people who are working on this have told me that eventually, if it works, it will be converted to a power plant. However, no funding exists for research for such use at this point. A few of the biggest tasks include cooling the environment around the laser (lasers tend to heat things up), as well as focusing the laser on the pea-sized target. From what they're saying, "we're at least twenty years away from having this working..."
-Palal
When's the shark mod come out?
Sharks everywhere rejoice upon reading Slashdot.
Here's a low-budget version of said project:
http://www.solardeathray.com/
Igniting toy soldiers is more fun than hydrogen, and more colorful too.
I was once on a [Can't tell you] site debugging their Token Ring network (It turned out that EMPs from their various 'experiments' were getting into the optical fibre via the transceivers on the NICs, but that's another story!).
While I was there I was invited to see a test firing of their laser "one of the biggest in Europe" - they were firing it at various polymers to see what flew off (OK, that's a bit simplified).
I must have walked about 1 mile across this site and was taken into a 'clean room' where I donned a cap, white coat and had plastic bags put over my shoes. I was given a brief presentation from the gantry overlooking the test area (VERY 'James Bond', complete with red flashing lights and a countdown clock) - it must have been 50ft from end to end. Next, a quick look at the capacitor room (wow!).
"Charging in 1 minute" came the voice over the loud speaker, followed by a 10 second countdown and lots of high pitched whistling as the capacitors were charged.
By now I was back on the gantry overlooking the experiment. More lights, a siren and then..."FIRING in 10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1", followed by.......a large 'CLUNK' as some hefty relays shunted the charge from the capacitors into the laser.
"Well, that's it for now", said my host, "It'll be about 6 hours before the optics cool down enough so we can do it again."
I thanked my host for the wonderful tour as we headed back to the guard house and car park, but was really thinking it was all a bit of a trek and effort for a 'clunk'!
AT&ROFLMAO
this is obviously a poor excuse to try to make a working model of a death star.
I for one think they should indeed shift all efforts to getting that coin in the parking meter from 40miles away instead - that would be so cool.
ôó
....who, after reading the article, seems like it's more concentrated on producing a self-sustaining fusion reaction than just a huge laser?
My other Sig is
May I ask what's the in-joke between sharks and LASERs? I still don't get it.
this looks much the LMJ (laser megajoule) we are going to get here in France. We also claim it will world's most powerful. I don't know which one is better, but we'll have 240 beams versus 192 beams on the US facility :D
http://www-lmj.cea.fr/html/cea.htm
If I am not mistaken, LLL is doing this as a way to develop new nuclear weapons, which in my mind is sick and wrong.
How far along IS the LMJ by the way....?
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
they have a working prototype, the LIL ("ligne d'intégration laser"), which amplifies and fire 8 beams. there will be 30 of them in the LMJ
BTW there's some cooperation between NIF and LMJ, for the experience chambers, getting the materials and for I-don't-know-what.
...with remaining *head*! (shudders at thought of instant vaporizations...)
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
...should the headline have been?
Nobody wants to admit it, though, because there's such a long history of unsuccessful fusion experiments. If they claim goal #1 is to achieve ignition with positive payback and it doesn't happen, there will be lots of "$5 billion wasted" headlines. Far safer to say "it will be useful for weapons research," because (1) it will and (2) that's hard to measure.
I guarantee every scientist working on that project hopes to achieve fusion with positive payback. They're just being circumspect.
Yes we very often see the CEA guys poking around here. Probably doing scaled implosions to verify LMJ's ignition capability... Do you know if the CEA is planning any large chirped pulse stuff?
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Welcome our new Dark Overlords!
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Are there a lot of funny mods on today, or are large lasers and fusion reactions just extremely funny topics?
Terra is the Latin name for Earth, tera is the SI name for 10^9. You don't say "jiggawatt" so please stop using terrajoule right away, thanks!
Dark Horse comics? Author Yukinobu Hoshino? 1997? What a ripoff.
James P. Hogan wrote "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" in 1979. The plot line is the same as the one listed on the Dark Horse page.
Why does this idea sound disturbingly similar to Dr. Octavius' attempt at creating a fusion reaction?
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
ok already!
Thank you Dave Raggett
I dont know if you kids know this *BUT* if they did successfully initiate hydrogen fusion, then this would result in next-to free power (from hydrogen obtained in electrolysis from the sea) But, the laser first has to heat the hydrogen pellet to greater-than-or-equal-to 100 MILLION degrees celsius (this is like 180 MILLION farenheit but im not entirely sure about that calculation) Yeah, but i read it in a book written circa 1983 hehe, old books are funny, especially with predictions about things we'd have by 2000...
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
"the experiments will help determine the effects of aging on warheads and help assure they will work as expected, should they be needed"
This is not the first time I read that "excuse" for building those huge lasers, building huge computers, and so on, but I can't understand why it is so difficult and so important to test them.
First, is their aging so impredictable?
Second, why not simply replace the "used" parts?
Third, does it really matter if some are dud?
I really wish someone can answers those "simple" question...
I just hope it doesn't explode my house :)
The ability to ignite fusion in a pea-sized hydrogen pellet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
...these giant laser projects always seem to end with the sun exploding or something like that.
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... can't wait until someone shines this thing at an airplane. Damn terrorists!
Coding Monkey.org - Spanging the heavy spade of truth into t
1. Steal pea sized ball of hydrogen 2. Build $5,000,000,000.00 terawatt/second laser (aka DeathStar) 3. ??? 4. PROFIT!!!
As others have pointed out, this white elephant has been going on for years now. It's what, seven years late and 4 billion over budget so far? There were letters being written about it being only 350 million over and a year late in 1999, and asking serious questions about whether or not it _could_ work. That was five years ago.
And to everyone who thinks it's a great idea that we build this thing for fusion power, consider this: rhe electical industry has already pretty much told the fusion researchers that they can't imagine ever building a fusion plant.
No, really.
While the researchers continue to support their budgets with "cheap unlimited clean power" mantras, the reality is that fusion plants are rediculously expensive, and show no signs that they won't always be so. Additionally they require a fuel infrastructure that does not currently exist, and as the Canadians learned with CANDU, going this route for long-term savings is fraught with peril.
The industry also has the problem that these things only work if they're big. That's a problem because when you bring the plant online, supply-n-damand makes the price of electrity drop. That's one of the reasons no one builds nukes any more, you loose money when you turn them on.
If you're worried about the enviornment, buy a hybrid. Fusion is not your saviour.
Nobody mentioned writing their name on the moon... ala:
"So does the moon read 'CHA' yet?"
or
"Finally Chairface Chippendale has revealed his plot!"
All anyone could think of was an 80s movie?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
the "Alan Parsons Project"
woahahahahahah....
Since 1989 people have tried annodes, popping bubbles in liquids (sonoluminescene) and piezoelectric crystals with tritium. The third method gnerates neutrons in a repeatable fashion, a sign it is probably fusing the tritium. It does however, require more input energy than it produces. It may have apps as a controllable neutron source.
Yes I would!
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
OK, so who is working on the phase conjugate mirror? Can't have a super secrete weapon without a phase conjugate mirror...
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
I've heard rumors over the years of cost overruns and missed performance milestones, both on NIF and NOVA, its predecessor. Knowing from being a laser jock in the realm of molecular spectroscopy that it's hard enough to make two YAG lasers with tens of megawatt peak power behave, how do they realisticlly expect to tame the timing, beamshape, and power issues associated with this beast?
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
"Dark Sun" that Taylor
should be
"Dark Sun" that Edward Teller thought Taylor
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton