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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.

2 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. So what? by damburger · · Score: 0, Troll

    To be honest, its hard to get excited about this with the LHC coming online soon. I guess this is of interest to Americans though.

    --
    If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
  2. Re:Time duration? by Turiko · · Score: 0, Troll

    any proof the laser's brightness is true? he was comparing :)