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World's Newest, Most Powerful Laser Comes Online
deglr6328 writes "The OMEGA EP laser at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics was dedicated today at the Robert L. Sproull Center for Ultra High Intensity Laser Research. The new laser, which has been in design since ~2002 will, at 1 kilojoule per 1 picosecond pulse, be the highest energy petawatt-scale laser ever created by far. For a fleeting fraction of a second, it will deliver a beam of infrared light at 1054 nm that is more powerful than the total energy consumption of all human activity on the planet, to a tiny spot the size of the head of a pin. Previous petawatt scale lasers such as the one created at Lawrence Livermore labs in the late '90s and (dismantled in 1999) were capable of only several hundred joules per pulse. The new OMEGA EP laser will be able to manifest power densities sufficient to examine Unruh and Hawking radiation-like phenomena in the laboratory and will have the capability to directly produce nuclear reactions through ultra high electric field initiated photodisintegration."
It works more like this. Imagine water flow. Amps are the area of the cross-section of the pipe. (This is why Amperage determines wire thickness. If the wire isn't as thick as the cross-section then heat will build up. Not good.)
Volts are the pressure on the water (think length of pipe's worth of water per second. That's pressure. Regardless of the diameter of the pipe, the same length of pipe's worth of water will come out per second at the same pressure. Same thing with Volts).
Watts are volts times amps which in water equivalent would be like volume per time (that's what you get when you multiply area by length/time). Multiply Watts by time and you get energy (measured in Watt-hours or whatever).
Their statement is recursive:
"For a fleeting fraction of a second, it will deliver a beam of infrared light at 1054 nm that is more powerful than the total energy consumption of all human activity on the planet"
Last I checked, Rochester (and the laser there) are located on planet earth. Strictly speaking, it could only consume all the power on the planet if everything else were shut off. 'Course, that statement would apply to everything else, including a blender. Here's a suggestion for the poster: "...more powerful than the total energy consumption of all other human activity on the planet..."