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."
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.
Alternatively,
We need to find an evil college professor and fill his house with popcorn!
Hilarity will ensue!
More
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The term "ignition" refers to the point of intensity of a fusion reaction whereby the high (kinetic) energy He nuclei fusion product is sufficient in power to heat any remaining fuel to the point of fusing itself. ie. when the reaction is capable of sustaining itself provided you continue to feed it with fuel. It is called Q=1. The NIF should achieve >Q=10 on a full system DT shot and this is called thermonuclear ignition and burn with "high gain". NOTE! the NIF will almost certainly NOT achieve breakeven (total power in Nd:glass lasers are disgustingly inefficient (~1%). Diode pumped Nd:glass is another story however and if a power plant is ever to be constructed using laser fusion then that is likely what will be used. They are still too fantastically expensive today though.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
And let that be a lesson to any other pea-sized hydrogen capsules that plan to screw with us.
yes its just another definition of ignition. spectrum of energy emitted by the H? I'm not sure I understand what you're after. If it is the energy of the products of the DT reaction you're interested in then its H-3 + H-2--> He-4 (with a kinetic energy of 3.5 MeV) and a hot neutron with a KE of 14.1 MeV. If it is the actual electromagnetic radiation from the hot plasma you are talking about then it just radiates like a blackbody at ohhh say 100 million degrees :o) which happens to be mostly in hard X-rays.
Incidentally, as long as I'm posting here I'd like to say that (no surprise really, its a science article) the AP article gets it a bit wrong. The NIF will never achieve the status of "most powerful" laser on earth. Highest energy laser on earth? At 2 MEGAjoules yes it will be the most energetic. But not the most powerful. The maximum power of the NIF is estimated at 500-750 Terawatts (trillion watts) (I'm approximating). However, the OMEGA EP laser which will be finished in 2007 (before NIF) will achieve a power of over 2 PETAwatts or 2 million billion watts. Several times that of the NIF.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
what if the sharks eat the pea?
Ok, ok. I totally got this reference right away. Which maybe dates me a bit (I'm under 30).
:-)
A few people will usually get it. But the majority will say something amazingly stupid.
But what makes that movie (and that scene) so special?
Oh, come on! That's the ultimate 80's party movie for geeks! They pulled off all sorts of geeky pranks (dry ice in the hall, disassembling/reassembling a car in the dorm, tuning a radio to braces), saved the world through some pretty creative hacking/espionage, and even pulled an awesome prank on the bad guy! What's not to like?
Group think. Meh, original scenes make group think happen because the group remembers them.
Ummm... no. Group Think refers to the Slashdot mentality of accepting the story spin at face value without checking the facts. A perfect example was the Chase Mastercard story from a day or two ago. The poster said "wireless", "RFID", and "insecure", thus ensuring that 95% of the posts were "This sucks and is insecure wireless crap that I can hack like this RFID hack (some pointless link here)!" The truth of the matter was that the card was not wireless (induction), not RFID (smartcard), and was not insecure (crypto chip). It was actually a marked improvement over the current cards! And yet, the last response to my rebuttals of such nonsense still had someone calling it wireless and insecure! Enough to make me want to drop-kick a few people...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade