EU Scientists Working On Laser To Rip a Hole In Spacetime

astroengine writes "Those pesky physicists are at it again; they want to build a laser so powerful that it will literally rip spacetime apart. Why? To prove the existence of virtual particles in the quantum vacuum, potentially unravel extra dimensions and possibly find the root of dark matter. The $1.6 billion Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility (known as ELI) will be built somewhere in Europe by the end of the decade and physicists are hoping the ten high-powered lasers — delivering 200 petawatts of power at a target for less than a trillionth of a second — will turn up some surprises about the very fabric of the Universe."

Comments

Re:Results how?

[reverseengineer]

It wouldn't be so much tearing a hole in the fabric of space as making a ripple. The laser's electric field would make a wake in the sea of transient vacuum particles that prevents their instantaneous annihilation, and hopefully lets some exotic particles exist for long enough to be detected. Despite the idea that this "quantum foam" of seething virtual particles would be the fabric of space-time, the answers to where and when phenomena would be detected are most likely "in detectors just outside the laser's path" and "femtoseconds after the laser is fired" and not perhaps "in another universe" or "85 million years in the past." This is not a FOX show, after all.

Actually, far more energetic phenomena-- gamma ray bursts-- have been studied to observe the effects their travels through the fabric of space-time on the way to Earth have had, and the results have been pretty mundane. Even for ridiculously high-energy gamma ray photons, the fabric of the universe behaves as being essentially smooth and respectful of general relativity. Maybe we'll see something a bit wilder given a chance to take a closer look, but to describe "pushing some particles apart so we can see them" as "tear apart the vacuum of space" is a bit of an exaggeration.