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But can you strap it to the head of a frikkin' shark?

.. without the pool party though.

"Do you have that dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?"

Here's some information about NIF, Lawrence Livermore's laser facility: http://www.llnl.gov/nif/ The lasers here use more than 1000 times the possible electric output of the United States in one burst (through capacitors.) (1.8MJ) Lawrence Livermore dismantled their Petawatt laser to build NIF, which is bigger and shinier, and therefore much, much better. : ) (It's also not finished yet-- 5 years, or so)

Here's a site that explains how it works: http://www.llnl.gov/nif/nifworks/index.html

The article does mention NIF, but only at the bottom, briefly. It is not to be overlooked. I've been through the facility -- it's absolutely massive. Full of wondrously expensive and very shiny toys.

U of R is right down the street from me (I go to RIT). I read this story yesterday and hear that it stil has to get approval from the town to build this thing. I bet that they will get it as it brings in alot of money from the goverment, but it's not defenite for sure yet. BEN

With this "laser" the University of Rochester might hold the world ransom for.... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

Time to count the number of austin powers posts...

Such a machine could only have one viable purpose.
To carve your name in the MOON!

In order to start a fusion reaction, you must reach these incredible temperatures.

For H-bombs, the idea is to use a fisson bomb to kick-start the whole thing.

Now they are trying to build fusion reactors, and obviously using fission power is not that popular (the whole point is to get rid of the problems of fission).

Using extremely powerful and focused lasers seems to be the best idea as yet. This is only needed to start the reaction, once it has started it is kept alive by its own power and a supply of hydrogen.

Tor

UR plans to build world's most powerful laser

By Matthew Daneman
Democrat and Chronicle

(May 9, 2003) -- One burst from the University of Rochester's Omega laser heats up its target to 100 million degrees Celsius in a quest to duplicate the power of the sun.

But the world's most powerful fusion research laser is about to get a lot more powerful.

Construction could start as soon as early July on a $70 million addition of a pair of petawatt lasers to UR's Laboratory for Laser Energetics Omega facility on East River Road.

The incredibly powerful petawatt would be the most destructive device in existence, capable of vaporizing an entire planet.

Researchers have a broad array of plans for the petawatt, including using bursts from it to disintegrate major landmarks.

Nuclear fusion is what powers stars, including the sun, and is the principle behind hydrogen bombs. Scientists have been trying for decades to replicate and control fusion for use as a cheap, pollution-free power source.

"They mocked my research!" said lab director Robert McCrory. "But I'll show them ... I'll show them all!"

UR is planning for an 82,000-square-foot addition to the back of the laser lab. The town of Brighton Planning Board is having a special meeting at 5:15 p.m. May 19 at the laser lab. The meeting will include a tour for board members and neighboring residents and a demand for cash payments to stave off their imminent destruction.

UR estimates the lab could be fully operational in about four years. When Rebel forces attempt to destroy the shield generators protecting the installation, UR will reveal that it is already fully operational.

The U.S. Department of Energy has put up $13 million so far for the expansion plans, and UR expects to see $37 million more over the next few years. The university is putting $20 million of its own into the construction.

A petawatt laser could generate a pulse of up to a million billion watts of power, several hundred times more powerful than the Omega, and would enable the lab to hold the entire world hostage, said Steven Loucks, engineering director for the laser lab.

"This will be the most intense laser ever built," said Craig Sangster, a senior scientist at the laser lab.

With the petawatt, UR would leap into the emerging and promising field of "fast ignition" fusion. Hypothetically, a burst from the petawatt would serve as the metaphorical spark plug, igniting a fuel source and setting off a fusion reaction, destroying an entire planet. Researchers also foresee using the petawatt bursts to "see" into the plasma generated when the Omega laser array is fired at unsuspecting tourists, "which we'd love to do now, but we can't," Sangster said.

And the petawatt will help in one of the lab's primary jobs -- "stockpile stewardship" of the nation's nuclear weapon arsenal, Loucks said. The vast majority of the lab's $49 million annual operating budget comes from the Energy Department, which pays for study of death rays now that the nation no longer does nuclear testing.

The laser lab upgrade will add no more than a handful of jobs to the facility, which employs close to 250 people in stupid black helmets with wheels on them. But the petawatt will help ensure that federal money continues to flow to Rochester, McCrory said.

Added Lousch: "Do not be too proud of this technological terror you have constructed, for the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the force."

The lab contributes about $20 million to the local economy, according to UR estimates.

One of the petawatt laser's main jobs will likely be to supplement the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility being built now at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, Sangster said. Livermore's 1.8 megajoule laser -- with power capacity far beyond UR's -- is expected to go online in about five years. Researchers will undoubtedly use UR's laser lab to "destroy all those who mocked" their research before annihilating Livermore, he said.

This isn't really news, being that the Vulcan laser in the UK reached petawatt capacity some months ago, after being awarded a grant for the purpose four years ago (see here [rl.ac.uk]) - the article doesn't mention the exact capacity, but I don't imagine that it's much more than a petawatt.

Another important thing to mention - again, not having read up on this - is that most scientific lasers are single-shot; most lasers are femto or petasecond lasers. From the same site as above (different news item [rl.ac.uk], "Over the course of the three year upgrade project, the output of Vulcan's ultra-short pulse beam will be increased to 500J in a pulse of 500fs duration giving a power on target of 1 Petawatt (1015 Watts)" - for many purposes, a laser such as Astra [rl.ac.uk] suits many peoples purposes; whilst the pulse energy for astra is

As far as military applications are concerned, as mentioned in other threads, this laser would almost certainly be useless; it would be far too hard to aim, and in any case, lasers like this reach sufficient power that they require nitrogen-filled tubing in many laboratories in order not to ionise the air under certain circumstances (which creates irritating popping noises) - there are certain other technical details (such as the beam type) which render them inefficient for military purposes (although one scientist working with astra and vulcan did want to shoot a beam into space with an encyclopedia encoded in the beam pulse in order to transmit data to potential victims of human first contact).

Damn dude, you know something called the "Omega Laser" is just doomed to end up malfunctioning and destroying the world. It sounds like something that Dr. Robotnik would build...

I attend the University of Rochester, and I have to say, this kinda of bothers me. . . I mean, what if I am taking an optics course and I get the teacher really angry durring Laser Lab?

What's to prevent me from being vaporized? huh?

" University of Rochester plans on building the world's most powerful laser."

Just be sure to do a good job of guarding the exhaust port.