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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 if you can get it to fit in the weapons bay of a B1-B we might have something.
That's nothing! I can perform for 3 seconds once every ten minutes!
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
20 billion trillion watt per square centimeter = 2x10^26 Wm^-2
300 terawatt of power = 3x10^14 W
1.3 micron wide = ca. 1.7x10^-12 m^2 (for a square shape)
30 femtosecond = 3x10^-14 s
hope that clarifies things.
Because focussed correctly, the extremely high field strenght in the focal point can create effects that at first seem physically implausible.
:)
For example there is one effect that seems to "break" quantum phyiscs (or more exactly, the photo-effect): You can excite electrons out of energy levels that are bound stronger than the photon energy. Even if they are bound _a_ lot stronger. The electric fields can be strong enough to strip atoms from everything down to and including the k-shell (I have one seen a presenter show a silde mentioning 37-photon effects...)
This can be used to create hard x-rays, or, of course, as a particle accelerator: You can GeV on ion energyies from them with a relatively simple setup.
This is of course for "normal" FS-Lasers, wich fill not much more than a large optical bank. But something tells me that _this_ one can make even more intersting stuff happen
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
...it's a gigantic spherical shark?
Student: What are we going to do with this immensely powerful laser, professor? :D
Professor: We shall commence "Phase 2", we shall place the "la-ser" on something called "the moon"
Student: And then we can hold the world ransom for a horrendously large amount of money
Professor: Hell no! We're going to wipe all other universities off the face of the Earth!
- John
Really what did I expect, 3/4 of the people here weren't even born yet or were still shitting their diapers when Real Genius came out.
I guess I should have wasted "first post" on something obvious like "Sharks with frikin' laser beams attached to their heads"
If you've never seen the movie, your ability to post on /. is hereby suspsended until you do.
For very large values of shark.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
... 9 Joules delivered in each pulse, one every 10 seconds. Giving an average power of about 1 Watt. Ideal for taking over very small universes.
Ah. I see your problem. You're a "High Cinema" snob who's too "good" for an 80's popcorn classic, and you're too stubborn to admit that you were really just piggy-backing on the first post to elevate the attention to your post like some sort of forum remora once someone pointed out your ignorance of the joke.
Congratulations. You have now made a fool of yourself in front of a crowd by trying to prove that you're better than them for being ignorant of "low cinema." Few things are more sad than a defense of ignorance. Also, giving your autobiography in response to questions about your taste on the internet just shows your own insecurity. Lurk more.
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