This is not accurate. Watts are indeed rates of energy consumption, that is, the amount of energy consumed per unit time (Watt stands for Joule per second). Now, if we squeeze 100 Joules in into 10^-13 of a second, then the *instantaneous* power during those 100 femtoseconds (and yes, the story has got it wrong, it's a tenth of a picosecond, not femtosecond, which makes a hundred femtoseconds) is one petawatt. The average power, assuming we operate at 0.1Hz (which I think will be the laser's repetition rate) is only 10 Watts.
This also answers the "heating" problem. These lasers carry a relatively small amount of energy, and produce very little heat. However, the electric field that is produced when the beam is focused is huge, and many interesting phenomena can be studied with such a laser.
Btw, for the same reason, this type of laser is completely useless as a weapon. In order to cause any real damage one has to deposit energy into the substance that is to be damaged, and again, these laser pulses carry a relatively small amount of energy.
Let me offer a different perpective on the whole Gnome vs. KDE thing. It's true that they are both window managers and not an OS, but from the perspective of a desktop user, the window manager IS the OS! Why is all of FOSS out there must be considered "Linux"? (not to mention that both KDE and Gnome do not require necessarily Linux to run) Why don't we look at all this and say something like: Hey, look, we have several free alternatives to Microsoft Windows - we have Gnome, we have KDE, and we have a bunch of others. However, unlike switching from Windows to one of these, switching between them is easy! They can even share software, files, bookmarks, preferences and all without needing to build some sophisticated emulator! Isn't that cool?
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This is not accurate. Watts are indeed rates of energy consumption, that is, the amount of energy consumed per unit time (Watt stands for Joule per second). Now, if we squeeze 100 Joules in into 10^-13 of a second, then the *instantaneous* power during those 100 femtoseconds (and yes, the story has got it wrong, it's a tenth of a picosecond, not femtosecond, which makes a hundred femtoseconds) is one petawatt. The average power, assuming we operate at 0.1Hz (which I think will be the laser's repetition rate) is only 10 Watts.
This also answers the "heating" problem. These lasers carry a relatively small amount of energy, and produce very little heat. However, the electric field that is produced when the beam is focused is huge, and many interesting phenomena can be studied with such a laser.
Btw, for the same reason, this type of laser is completely useless as a weapon. In order to cause any real damage one has to deposit energy into the substance that is to be damaged, and again, these laser pulses carry a relatively small amount of energy.
Let me offer a different perpective on the whole Gnome vs. KDE thing. It's true that they are both window managers and not an OS, but from the perspective of a desktop user, the window manager IS the OS! Why is all of FOSS out there must be considered "Linux"? (not to mention that both KDE and Gnome do not require necessarily Linux to run) Why don't we look at all this and say something like: Hey, look, we have several free alternatives to Microsoft Windows - we have Gnome, we have KDE, and we have a bunch of others. However, unlike switching from Windows to one of these, switching between them is easy! They can even share software, files, bookmarks, preferences and all without needing to build some sophisticated emulator! Isn't that cool?