Ultra-Powerful Laser To Be Built In Romania 41
cripkd writes "The 3rd pillar from the ELI program was given the go ahead Tuesday: 'In Romania, Magurele, the ELI pillar will focus on laser-based nuclear physics. For this purpose, an intense gamma-ray source is foreseen by coupling a high-energy particle accelerator to a high-power laser.' Here are some specs and details about why this is not your regular key-chain laser."
Re:We all know what's coming. (Score:4, Funny)
This is a clear step towards Dracula's moon laser.
http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/11p16/
The main problem with this is that it will inevitably lead to a Vampire vs Werewolf arms race.
Re:We all know what's coming. (Score:4, Funny)
the Romanians should well know only UV lasers can harm the sons and daughters of Vlad, Count of Draco; and only silver ion particle beams harm the lycanthrope
Now all they need... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Now all they need is a really big shark.
That's where Romania is getting the funding....
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Not at all. They're flying all their materials in by vampire bat.
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Yeah, saw the Top Gear episode where they were driving through Romania and struck that destination off my bucket list.
What's the point... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What's the point... (Score:5, Informative)
What's the point if we can't put one of these on a fricken shark? I mean, seriously. Is that too much to ask?
Of course you can put one these on a shark. Unfortunately, you'd have to clone that Megalodon first, they're kind of rare these days.
Re: (Score:1)
What's the point if we can't put one of these on a fricken shark? I mean, seriously. Is that too much to ask?
The gadget might be a tad bit too large to be mounted on a fish
but I suppose that someone could bolt a shark on it.
Re: (Score:3)
You missed first post. Mods, he's redundant. In fact, the previous shark comment (actual FP) should be marked redundant as well because it's just too damned obvious.
You want a non-obvious, far better (but still bad) shark joke? Come on, guys, have you no originality at all?
Q: Why did the shark cross the road?
A: To get to Romania.
What is it to "coherently add" laser beams? (Score:4, Interesting)
But "coherently adding" beams sounds exactly like this. Does anyone know if it really is the same thing, or how it works?
Re:What is it to "coherently add" laser beams? (Score:5, Informative)
Some beam combining is just lens squeezing a bunch of side by side lasers down into a smaller beam, where the beam shape doesn't matter as much as beam power.
The easiest way to combine two beams right on top of each other is just for them to have orthogonal polarizations, and run them "backwards" through one of the various optics that can split polarizations. You then end up with an unpolarized beam. With a little more care, if you can make sure the phases of the two beams are the same, you can combine two orthogonal linear polarized beams and end up with a linear beam output at 45 degrees to the original polarization, which then allows you to repeat the combining process. You can also use diffraction gratings to combine several beams on to one output beam, without using polarization.
Doing these methods in a coherent fashion requires careful control of the relative phase of each laser, and starts acting more like phased arrays from radio/microwave bands. Things also get messy, as you can easily get into situations where ray optics no longer work and need to work with quasioptics.
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Firstly, let us start with another rant: the ESM treaty has nothing to do with the spending of the individual member states, this is handled by another treaty called TSCG (known as the fiscal compact), assuming you mean to protest against the fiscal compact and not actually the ESM treaty.
By the fiscal compact, no one need to ask permission for spending, unless the spend well above what they have previously agreed to, which actually means running a huge deficit, which in turn result in the deficit having to
Ode to Joy! (Score:2)
Hear, hear!
Intense gamma ray source? (Score:3)
roar... (Score:2)
Somehow, when I read this headline about romania, the first thing that came to mind was the q-bomb...
Just like George Bush said (Score:1)
The Hulk! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)