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."

Comments

Re:what would happen...

[ScentCone]

if we aim that to a human being?

--

- Human knowledge belongs to the world

Because... you want to share with the world what would happen if something that it takes an entire lab to operate on ultra tiny targets were, what... strapped to the back of a super soldier flying around in a black helicopter? Without a little context, your questions seems a little... absurd.

Incidentally, I presume that since you think that whatever the people doing this research learn belongs to the world, that you've figured out how to collect taxes from the entire world to help pay for the research? In fact, there are all sorts of things being researched, all over the world. Who's paying the salaries and the material expenses for every one of those projects? Should I be able to demand that a company in South Korea working on a better LCD projection chip, in which they're investing hundreds of thousands of man hours, should - the moment they have some solid "human knowledge" about how to make it - just hand that over to a factory in China who will then produce products with that knowledge, happy that the knowledge belongs to them, since they are part of the world?

Oh, and since you probably know your banking information, and that's part of human knowledge, please provide that to the world.

Or, just use less of a ridiculous platitude for your sig, especially when you're wondering out loud what a picosecond lab laser would do when shot at a human being.