Slashdot Mirror
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."
>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.
obviously.
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.
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.
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.
Spoooooonnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!
(My daughter loves that show!)
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
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 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.
- 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.
Dicks on the moon.
I was thinking of a different vintage sf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
And fire the laser from an airplane to heat the house.
Don't forget the giant helium balloon... http://xkcd.com/585/
Burn the worlds biggest ants... what else?
portfolio
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.
the world's most powerful shark.
You know what they say about opinions. They're all fabulous!
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.
This. The NIF is basically a weapons lab, but with an astoundingly good PR wing. They tout themselves as contenders in some "race" against ITER. Their machine was used as a set-prop in Star Trek. And they regularly generate "major milestone" headlines, for accomplishments that are relatively minor, and way overdue. All for a lab that, in essence, tests thermonuclear weapons.
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".
Regardless of how much NIF tries to hide it is mainly funded for weapons code testing (not that much if you actually talk to the people who work there or look at any of the stuff they write or say at outreach events), most large projects have additional side goals. Even projects a thousand times cheaper than NIF have a person trying to use the same setup to test things like astrophysical models or basic science. You can look a proposal or progress report for something like a tokamak, see ten pages of talk about confinement and fusion physics, and then there will be another page of astrophysics tests, etc.
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.
Can you pop enough corn to demolish a house?
richard.
Electric eels with lasers, they have their own power source.
Fight Spammers!
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.
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?
I would probably shoot my fucking eye out, kid.
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
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
You can't point it anywhere, it's in a sphere and the lasers face inward. :P
But to your point (being some organization), if I had the world's most powerful laser, I would take the politics out of it so that the scientists could make progress. So, technically, you're not too far off.
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.
Perhaps you should put all the politics into it first then fire it to get them out.
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.
Always the problem with fusion, the proto(ns) tend to miss.
Threaten to use the laser to melt the icecaps, and alter the world's climate, unless I were paid one million dollars.