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The Texas Petawatt Laser

Posted by kdawson on from the you-can-pet-a-dog-or-you-can-pet-a-cat dept.

Roland Piquepaille notes the hype surrounding what the University of Texas at Austin is calling the world's most powerful laser. During a tenth of a femtosecond this laser is 2,000 times more powerful than all the power plants in the US, and is brighter than sunlight on the surface of the Sun. On his own blog Roland points out that UT's is not the first petawatt laser; that distinction belongs to a system installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1996.

1 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So what? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Because a big freaking laser is interesting? Jeez, lay off the America-bashing for a while - it's unhealthy to fixate on such things. It's odd that the first thing that you thought of was how Americans suck and how Europeans are so great with their LHC. What do we call that, "projection"? This laser has got nothing to do with the LHC, which I am also excited to see.

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