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U of MI Produces Strongest Laser Ever
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Feb 17, 2008 05:32 AM
from the now-we-just-need-a-really-big-shark-and-we're-set dept.
from the now-we-just-need-a-really-big-shark-and-we're-set dept.
eldavojohn writes "Weighing in at a mere 20 billion trillion watts per square centimeter and containing a measly 300 terawatts of power, the University of Michigan has broken a record with a 1.3-micron speck wide laser. It's about two orders of magnitude higher than any other laser in the world and can perform for 30 femtoseconds once every ten seconds — some of the researchers speculate it is the most powerful laser in the universe. 'If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of a new laser beam made in a University of Michigan laboratory ... To achieve this beam, the research team added another amplifier to the HERCULES laser system, which previously operated at 50 terawatts. HERCULES is a titanium-sapphire laser that takes up several rooms at U-M's Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. Light fed into it bounces like a pinball off a series of mirrors and other optical elements. It gets stretched, energized, squeezed and focused along the way.'" And ... cue the evil chortling.
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Cool (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cool (Score:5, Funny)
Popcorn [imdb.com]!
Parent
Re:Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
http://media.www.michigandaily.com/media/storage/paper851/news/2006/02/20/Science/Sharks.The.Initial.Frontier-1620047.shtml [michigandaily.com]
Parent
Re:Not so cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Really what did I expect, 3/4 of the people here weren't even born yet or were still shitting their diapers when Real Genius came out.
I guess I should have wasted "first post" on something obvious like "Sharks with frikin' laser beams attached to their heads"
If you've never seen the movie, your ability to post on /. is hereby suspsended until you do.
Parent
Re:Not so cool (Score:5, Funny)
It may not have been a great "teen flick" but it was certainly a good geek movie.
Over 100 movies in a year and you haven't heard enough about this to check it out?
Kid, I've served with geeks: I've known many geeks; geeks are most friends of mine. Kid, you're no geek.
Consider your geek card revoked (if, indeed, you ever had one).
Parent
Ah, a "high cinema" snob. (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations. You have now made a fool of yourself in front of a crowd by trying to prove that you're better than them for being ignorant of "low cinema." Few things are more sad than a defense of ignorance. Also, giving your autobiography in response to questions about your taste on the internet just shows your own insecurity. Lurk more.
Parent
Rubbish (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.clf.rl.ac.uk/news/CLF_News/vulcanpetawatt.htm [rl.ac.uk]
They even have a plaque from the Guinness book of records.
Parent
Safety first (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Safety first (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Safety first (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Kegels (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing! I can perform for 3 seconds once every ten minutes!
all these strange figures (Score:5, Informative)
300 terawatt of power = 3x10^14 W
1.3 micron wide = ca. 1.7x10^-12 m^2 (for a square shape)
30 femtosecond = 3x10^-14 s
hope that clarifies things.
... and that amounts to (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:all these strange figures (Score:5, Informative)
30 femtosecond = 3x10^-14 s
The duty cycle is 30 femtoseconds per 10 seconds.
If the '300 terrawatts' of power is consumed for 30 femtoseconds per 10 seconds, the average power consumption over 10 seconds is (3 * ((10^14) W) * 3 * ((10^(-14)) s)) / (10 s) = 0.9 watts
If, on the other hand, the 300 terrawatts is the average power consumption over 10 seconds, the power consumption when the laser is on is (3 * ((10^14) W) * (10 s)) / (3 * (10^(-14)) s) = 1.0 × 10^29 watts = 100,000 yottawatts
Yotta- is the largest SI prefix, and the total energy output of the Sun is 383 YW.
I suspect the former interpretation is more likely. This laser isn't so impressive when you realise it takes less power than my computer monitor... when my computer monitor is turned off.
Parent
So what can you do with it? (Score:4, Interesting)
What can you do with this thing? Why does it exist? Just to say it's there, or does it have some function beyond bragging rights?
Re:So what can you do with it? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
FS-Lasers are cool beasts (Score:5, Informative)
For example there is one effect that seems to "break" quantum phyiscs (or more exactly, the photo-effect): You can excite electrons out of energy levels that are bound stronger than the photon energy. Even if they are bound _a_ lot stronger. The electric fields can be strong enough to strip atoms from everything down to and including the k-shell (I have one seen a presenter show a silde mentioning 37-photon effects...)
This can be used to create hard x-rays, or, of course, as a particle accelerator: You can GeV on ion energyies from them with a relatively simple setup.
This is of course for "normal" FS-Lasers, wich fill not much more than a large optical bank. But something tells me that _this_ one can make even more intersting stuff happen
Re:FS-Lasers are cool beasts (Score:5, Interesting)
I found out later that my hunch was correct - it's just unlikely for two photons to hit an atom at exactly the same (to within a plancks time) with a low powered laser.
While I'm on the subject of laser, another cool things about high powered lasers is that the photons can collide. If you shine two beams so that they cross paths, some photons will collide with each other and scatter. This has always fascinated me since it shows that the distinction between matter and light is a very fine one indeed.
Another cool thing about this laser is that the pulse is very short. Now because the position is being constrained (since it's a short pulse), it must mean that the momentum is very uncertain. (You cannot know the position and velocity of something at the same time). This in turn means that the laser has a whole range of wavelengths - it does not have a specific wavelength. Which, to me, makes it very un-laser-like. It's not coherent, monochromatic, etc.
Parent
Re:FS-Lasers are cool beasts (Score:5, Informative)
A Planck time (10^-43 s)? How do you conclude that number?
If you shine two beams so that they cross paths, some photons will collide with each other and scatter.
The actual mechanism, I believe, is that a photon can momentarily fluctuate into a charged fermion/antifermion pair, and the cross-beam interacts with those particles.
Parent
What comes next... (Score:5, Funny)
Professor: We shall commence "Phase 2", we shall place the "la-ser" on something called "the moon"
Student: And then we can hold the world ransom for a horrendously large amount of money
Professor: Hell no! We're going to wipe all other universities off the face of the Earth!
Re:The power to destroy a planet... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Insightful)
- John
Parent
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've obviously done a lot more thinking about the whole Dr-Evil thing than me!
Parent
Re:In the universe? (Score:5, Informative)
In contrast the best particle beams on the planet get a few gold atoms to near light speed, while the natural ones can easily get the planet Jupiter moving at that pace.
Parent
Re:Sharks? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent