The Maxablaster is a 38-million-candlepower flashlight that was made at home by (mad?) optics engineer Ralf Ottow. Replacing a commercial flashlight's bulb with a plasma-powered mercury arc bulb, the Maxablaster creates a highly focused beam of light with a high UV content not so different from a star.

So UV-filtering glass was added to block the potentially harmful rays—though evidently this thing is still plenty bright enough to burn skin, as it has Ottow's on at least one occasion. In real world application, the flashlight can illuminate a cloud that's four miles in the air, or scare the neighbors by lighting up their house from the same distance.

One things for sure: when the vampires finally come out of hiding (a few hundred years after the robot apocalypse) we're calling this guy.

And then we're gonna be all like, "I see your Schwartz is as big as mine." (Sorry, we held that joke back until our arms were trembling.) [popsci]

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