EU Working On Most Powerful Laser Ever Built

kkleiner writes "On the coattails of CERN's success with the Large Hadron Collider, Europeans and the world at large have another grand science project to be excited about: the Extreme Light Infrastructure project to build the most powerful laser ever constructed. These lasers will be intense enough to perform electron dynamics experiments at very short time scales or venture into relativistic optics, opening up an entirely new field of physics for study. Additionally, the lasers could be combined to generate a super laser that would shoot into space, similar to the combined laser effect of the Death Star in the Star Wars trilogy, though the goal is to study particles in space, not annihilate planets."

Comments

Already featured

[CRCulver]

Slashdot has already featured at least one story recently about ELI. I can only assume that we're seeing this again because the possibility of shark jokes leads to more page views, which in turn generated more profits from advertising for this site's avarice-drunk proprietors.

Re:Already featured

[prefec2]

It will be either the 'sharks with frikkin lasers atached to their head'-jokes, or an accumulation of these people who thought that the LHC would produce micro-black-holes getting all excited about blowing something up. Turning from black hole alarmist to Death Star alarmists.
I wonder if these people are the same as the;

  - OMG the acidic rain will render the world uninhabitable! We must do something or we are all gonna die!

Well they said, acid rain destroys the forests. And it did. There was an significant increase in dead trees. The famous black forest became almost a no forest. So we did something about it and and now things are going to improve.

- OMG the LHC will end the world with a man-made black hole! We must do something or we are all gonna die!

That are definitely other people, because they did not have any proof at all. While in the previous version, trees could be counted and their health could be determined. the latter folks did not even provide a sound theory.

- OMG they want to ship radio active waste to the moon! Think about the radiation! Think about the kids! We must do something or we are all gonna die!

That sounds more like the first group. They calculated the risk to the ecosystem when a plutonium based reactor falls back to earth, breaks up in the atmosphere etc. However, shipping the waste to the moon or even into earth orbit is unbelievable expensive.

- OMG you drove a car today, according to these models, that will raise the sea level three feet by next Thursday you idiot! We must do something or we are all gonna die!

You seem to have trouble to categorize things correctly. If earth temperature rises. Or to be more precise. When we have more energy in the earth system, then that leads to more melted ice in Greenland and Antarctica. However, that will not rise the sea level today. It will affect your kids and their kids. They have to move New York or convert it into some Venice. The IPCC is definitely not an alarmist group.

- OMG the Mayan calender is going to finish us all! We must do something or we are all gonna die!

These guys are alarmists or even crazy. Simply because they have no proof. The only thing they have is a calendar, which ends after 6000 years. Well the world never ended when millions of calendars ended last year on December 31st. So why should that be different with that Mayan calendar. this is typical nonsense from people who have no insight into science.

- OMG they want to teach the kids Darwinism! We must do something or we are all gonna die!

Ah now you referring to Christian fundamentalists. As they oppose science, they fall in that alarmists group.

- OMG the Y2K bug! We must do something or we are all gonna die!

This was a marketing scheme (partly). However, if they had not fixed so many systems, it would have caused some trouble. But nothing serious.

- OMG Ponies!

Is this pony thing a dangerous event? I must have missed that. ;-)

Re:there was a time,

[MyLongNickName]

Your logic is very bad. The US National Ignition Facility is currently the home of the most powerful laser. So, your demise of the US prediction is vastly overstated. Then you have the fact that it is okay for other governments to do great things to. It is called being part of a community instead of being a hermit. Other countries' accomplishments don't detract from ours,

Re:What if we tried more power?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Sigh.