New Super Laser Burns Like the Sun
The world's strongest laser - powerful enough to create conditions as hot as inside the Sun - was unveiled Friday in the western U.S. state of California for an audience of politicians and scientists.
When the system goes online in two to three years, the nearly 200 lasers will focus all their power inward at a tiny 2-millimeter ball of frozen hydrogen gas, zapping it with 60 times more energy than any laser system that's come before. How much juice is that? Try 2 million joules.
"It's never been done before under controlled conditions," wrote the lab's Bob Hirschfeld in an e-mail. "Just in nuclear weapons and in stars."
The National Ignition Facility Aims to Create a Mini Star
Inside the target chamber. Courtesy of NIF
The hydrogen fuel pellet targeted for fusion. Courtesy of NIF
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