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What Would You Do With the World's Most Powerful Laser?
sciencehabit writes "This week, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced an important milestone on the road to achieving ignition, which could lead to producing controlled fusion reactions here on Earth. But NIF isn't just about harnessing the energy of the stars—it's about learning how stars produce their energy in the first place. In fact, pushing matter to extreme pressures and temperatures lets scientists explore all sorts of unanswered questions. At the annual meeting of AAAS in Chicago four physicists sat down with Science Magazine to discuss NIF's basic science potential and what experiments they would do if they had the laser all to themselves."
Point it at NSA headquarters. ...
Then FAA headquarters, just for grins.
>What Would You Do With the World's Most Powerful Laser?
I would attach it to the world's biggest shark. Obvious really.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I would try to put it on the largest shark in world...
No?
obviously.
Attach it to a shark, of course !
Probably prepare for unforseen consequences.
I'd make popcorn in Professor Hathaway's house, of course.
Let those assholes on the ground get a taste of their own medicine.
I would commit the ultimate case of vandalism! I will write my name on the face of the moon! MWUAHAHAHAH!
...would welcome myself as the new overlord.
IMHO the NIF is a excellent tool in researching the properties of ultra dense materials be they fusable or not and is up there with CERN as a high energy physics lab and it covers bulk phenomena that CERN can never touch. I expect papers on Rayleigh–Taylor instability, neutron absorption cross sections and tests on the theoretical reaction probabilities/speeds of H,D fusion. But (and you all knew I was about to say that) this is a research tool on the subjects I just mentioned and many others not a step towards a fusion power source. This is a excellent research tool and I fully support it - just don't think of it as a proto-proto-proto type fusion power plant.
"What Would You Do With the World's Most Powerful Laser?"
Toast my 80yo suburban neighbors barbecue for complaining about a few branches & leafs in my yard.
Either that, or prove that time traveling is actually possible.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoT-h0S1gkE
Shine it at airplanes
I must can has quicky thingy.
Put it on an orbital weapons platform, then hold the moon for ransom of ......1 Million Dollars....
Nevermind it cost 22.4 Billion to get the platform launched..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I expect you to die, Mr. Bond.
I would use it to obliterate the abomination that is Slashdot Beta... but then, who wouldn't?
and hire a janitor named Gordon to keep the test chamber maintained.
Launch a light sail to the stars
didn't the Congress vote to cut it'd funding?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Invade a desert nation with a bunch of my weaponizedmotorcycle-riding buddies and blow up some tanks.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
1. Build large nuclear power plant on the moon.
2. Use strongest laser to beam power to earth.
Alternatively,
1. Build large solar plant
2. Bring it into space
3. Send it towards the Sun
4. Use strongest laser to beam power to earth.
(Warning: please think this over first; this was just me brainstorming.)
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I think you missed a proto-
I would burn a gigantic smiley face into the moon. Why haven't we done that already?
I would fire it at /.Beta.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
look into it with my remaining eye.
Cook the world's biggest hotdog?
Mount it on the world's biggest shark?
"Frikkin' Giant Lasers!!!"
Nice one!
Would the uninhibited free market that some people champion have been able to create this? Maybe it could have, but we haven't seen it happen yet. This was the collaboration of a lot of people, building on a lot of publicly funded work.
- cut out some plywood enclosure for your raspi or arduino.
- try to etch some copper off a pcb while looking at the reflection.
- mount it on a quad copter and shoot around in the neighborhood, then post it on youtube.
- try building a projector and accidentally burn down city hall.
Sell it. I don't need the world's biggest laser. I'd much rather have the money.
Love sees no species.
Would you use it for good or for awesome?
Dicks on the moon.
id burn a hole in the moon, ofcourse! or rather, melt me a nice puddle of moon dust...
And fire the laser from an airplane to heat the house.
"But NIF isn't just about harnessing the energy of the stars—it's about learning how stars produce their energy in the first place"
Nonsense, it's about nuclear weapons design and stockpile stewardship. dress it up as a science project all you like..
As J. R. O. said.. "technically sweet"
Don't forget the giant helium balloon... http://xkcd.com/585/
Burn the worlds biggest ants... what else?
portfolio
Stick it on a X-Axis moving platform and shoot at space invaders.
Who lives on the corner of May Day St and Glendale Place in Washing DC?
Unless someone spelled "pew" differently.
Launch a spaceship, of course!
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Probably replace my policy of ripping a new asshole where needed to burning a new asshole where needed.
Bye Bye Alderan
the world's most powerful shark.
You know what they say about opinions. They're all fabulous!
Build an array of large powerful vertically oriented lasers around your space rocket launch platform, And use them to thermally evacuate the atmosphere in the vicinity of the launch trajectory, might be a nice ground based way to reduce the necessary launch fuel mass, by reducing drag. Problem is, that benefit may be outweighed by additional heat and laser shielding on the rocket.
"R.R.: I would would dope the fuel with heavy elements and see what happens." Love the guys spirit, that's an experimental scientist right there, after all the things designed to survive a serious fusion reaction.
Why bother even asking?
I'd figure out a way to use it to stop all the ridiculous Hugh Pickens DOT com reposts on Slashdot.
#DeleteChrome
I can't say that I'm really a fan of the National Ignition Facility. The PR side of it is "a grand search into fusion power research", but the reality seems to be nuclear weapons research. Coupled with the fact that the project has had massive mismanagement and cost overruns from an original ~$1 Billion estimate to costing over $4.2 Billion. Advanced research is never predictable to be sure, and some cost overrun/failure is to be expected but a four fold increase in costs AND no ignition? Sounds like we're not getting much bang for our research bucks.
I would then have a way to deal with that jerk hogging the passing lane and blocking traffic.
...May as well have been titled "Please insert shark with laserbeam joke here".
I can't believe nobody has said "point it at planes" yet - sharks indeed. You're all living in fantasy worlds. Out in the real world it's all planes.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/03/26/1439205/man-who-pointed-laser-at-aircraft-gets-30-month-sentence
...use it to amuse myself watching tigers and lions chase the dot around - from a distance.
Could it be put in high orbit, and used to shoot down all the small bits of space junk that is being tracked. Something has to be done eventually to clean up that mess, why not use some of that star wars technology to do that? Would this laser have enough light pressure to push the smaller pieces into a decaying orbit?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Point at the Moon during a summer solar eclipse to get the Sun light back.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Now this would impress chicks!
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
1. Tell the Pentagon it's for weapons research.
2. Tell everyone else it's for green energy.
3. Profit.
Send a message to the highest probable planetary system to sustain life.
Can you pop enough corn to demolish a house?
richard.
Electric eels with lasers, they have their own power source.
Fight Spammers!
I would point it at... your face?
Put on the world's most awesome Pink Floyd concert.
you pay me...one hundred billion dollars.
Run a Deuterium pulse detonation engine's output through the focal point of the NIF. ... start a Magnesium fire, spray Deuterium through the heat to break it up into plasma, run the resulting plasma through the NIF focal point.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
At an airplane
How about a few of my enemies being restrained and letting me point that laser at them. How many could i burn through if the stood back to chest?
Write obscenities. On the moon. Of course.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
The NIF is designed from front to back as a nuclear weapons project. The vast majority of its runs are dedicated to "NNSA" activities, the division of DOE for nuclear weapons engineering.
In particular, the NIF is used to calibrate the simulation codes used for the thermonuclear secondary. The lasers are there to ionize an outer 'hohlraum' which emits soft X-rays, simulating a fission primary. There are no difficult nuclear problems in a H-bomb, but there are difficult radiation and fluid mechanical problems.
Now that they have this thing they're trying to greenwash the project by trying to find something else to do with it.
The consequences of that could be terrible!
The shark would be safer - at least they can't climb trees.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Put Slim Pickens on it and make sure he shouts Yeeeeeehaaaaaaaaawww! Each time it is fired.
Chris Sheppard
I'd put a giant bag of popcorn in my professors house and lite that shit up from space.
obviously
Try it! Library of Babel
Q. What Would You Do With the World's Most Powerful Laser?
A: Fit it to the head of the worlds largest shark
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
when the only tool you have is the world's largest laser, everything looks like a rebel base.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I would point it to an iPhone and smirk while I watch it melt. Though on second thought it'd probably vaporize.
Blow up the moon obviously.
aim it at Yavin IV.
BMW's going to put laser headlights on some of their new cars. Never again would I loose a headlight duel.
Ask not what you would do with the world's most powerful laser.
Ask whether you can attach the worlds most powerful laser to a shark.
Point it at Obama
You really don't want to park in the wrong place at Livermore Labs. I don't know if they're still running the 5-story-high magnet they had back in the late 80s / early 90s when I went to some graphics conferences there, but if they can't just pick up your car and move it out of the way with the magnet, now they've got the Big Laser. Also don't go parking near the "No Parking - Spilled Plutonium" signs (though actually the nastier environmental problems they've had there have been leftover junk left over from WWII when the Navy was using the place - solvents that weren't yet known to cause cancer, or maybe they already were known to cause cancer but were still really effective solvents, the occasional leftover explosive, etc.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Hey, what's your serious response doing here, in between all the suggestions about sharks with frikkin' lasers?
NIF was always really about fusion research for the nuclear weapons programs, just as almost everything else at Livermore Labs was either related to weapons research & development, or infrastructure for the R&D folks (e.g. they did some good development on email systems back in the 80s because their R&D folks needed good email.) Some of it's more direct development, some of it's more basic science, but even then it's basic science intended to help weapons research. They've occasionally done other things (some solar energy research or whatever), but that's a drop in the bucket, and a lot of the environmental research they did was either trying to figure out how to clean up the messes their weapons folks made or the messes left over from the previous Navy base at that location.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Practical fusion power is now only 25 years away.
Again.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
NIF has nothing to do with "learning how stars produce their energy" or power genoration and everything to do with assesing the continued viability US's nuclear stock pile of H-bombs, Its a fasility which can conduct navarna desert stile tests, withought the complications/disadvantages of prying eyes/noses, or contaminating the US soil with fallout
Always the problem with fusion, the proto(ns) tend to miss.
ROTFLMAO @ "Chumpy" -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
(You sure "talk a good game" -> http://games.slashdot.org/comm... but you can't even produce a MERE SCRIPT!, windbag...)
You aren't even on the leve of a "script kiddie", & full of HOT AIR!
You certainly won't reply there in that 2nd link I posted either, as that would remove your downmods to my posts like this one you can't validly disprove or justify your downmod on -> http://games.slashdot.org/comm...
Oh, I suspect that IS the case here (simply logging out of a registered account & trolling by ac is a common troll trick around here OR using alternate registered 'luser' accounts sockpuppets to do the job will also, & Lumpy is LOADED with those & trolling - which doesn't matter: He PROVES he's all talk, no action (or skills, OR brains, lol))
(You're all TALK, & NO action "CHUMPY!)
* :)
(You know it, I know it, & so does anyone reading AND laughing their asses off @ you now... lol!)
APK
P.S.=> Answer the question in the subject-line Lumpy - since you had to "eat your wrods" in the 1st link above flavored with your FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + the "bitter taste of SELF-defeat", lol...
... apk
Threaten to use the laser to melt the icecaps, and alter the world's climate, unless I were paid one million dollars.