Slashdot Mirror
U of MI Produces Strongest Laser Ever
eldavojohn writes "Weighing in at a mere 20 billion trillion watts per square centimeter and containing a measly 300 terawatts of power, the University of Michigan has broken a record with a 1.3-micron speck wide laser. It's about two orders of magnitude higher than any other laser in the world and can perform for 30 femtoseconds once every ten seconds — some of the researchers speculate it is the most powerful laser in the universe. 'If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of a new laser beam made in a University of Michigan laboratory ... To achieve this beam, the research team added another amplifier to the HERCULES laser system, which previously operated at 50 terawatts. HERCULES is a titanium-sapphire laser that takes up several rooms at U-M's Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. Light fed into it bounces like a pinball off a series of mirrors and other optical elements. It gets stretched, energized, squeezed and focused along the way.'" And ... cue the evil chortling.
Now all they have to do is use it against the RIAA.
I am anarch of all I survey.
I have limited movie watching time. To put that in context, I have watched just 582 films in the last five years.
Given how many films were released before I was born, how many are released each year, and how many of those are likely to be of interest to me, I'm actually pretty comfortable about ignoring a mediocre 80s teen flick starring Val Kilmer.
I certainly don't consider it a pre-requisite to posting on Slashdot, whatever the state of my diapers.
The heck with the B1, I want to know if it can be mounted on the head of a shark!
Jesus, next you'll be telling me Weird Science and Electric Dreams are also must-see movies for geeks.
Given how many people on Slashdot think Office Space is a great comedy, forgive me if I ignore recommendations from this particular website.
One movie every three days may not sound like limited time to you. Given I have a full time job, social commitments and a couple of hobbies, it's about as much as I can spare. It averages at under an hour a night, rather less than most people spend watching TV, rather more than I do. It's also only a count of 'new movies', not the ones I've seen before but want to watch again. Adding another movie thus means using up time I could be spending watching another film I'm far more interested in.
Right now my Love Film rental list includes
Before Sunrise
Betty Blue
Collapse
Doctor Zhivago
Fanny And Alexander
Following
Irreversible
Rancid Aluminium
Romeo Is Bleeding
Rope
Russian Ark
Scarface
Simone
Theirs Is The Glory - Men Of Arnhem
So as I said, an 80s teen flick starring Val Kilmer would have to be rather better than Real Genius is reputed to be for me to make the time to watch it, no matter how allegedly geeky it is.
Incidentally, I just watched Badlands for the first time. Call me 'kid' if it makes you feel superior, but at least I'm trying to catch up on the films made during my formative years and not insulting people that choose not to.
(this side of your brain intentionally left blank)
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Why don't the Democrats scream that deficit spending is a tax increase plus interest. It is a much much worse tax increase!!
I'm really beginning to think all this politicking of the Democrats and Republicons is just a show to make us all think they are not really there just to steal our money.