Hidden away at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory‘s National Ignition Facility is a terrifying 10-story laser. Recently scientists have finally started using it in anger, and now they’ve even smashed previous records to fire the most powerful laser shot ever recorded.
https://gizmodo.com/the-world-s-most-powerful-laser-will-create-tiny-stars-5818355
On July 5th, the scientists fired the 192 constituent laser beams simultaneously, before focussing them down onto a circular target just 2 millimeters in diameter. The result was a laser beam transmitting an eye-watering 500 trillion watts. That’s 1,000 times more than the entire United States uses at any given moment, and the highest-energy laser shot ever fired in real life.
The long-term plan, of course, is to use this incredibly high-powered laser to kick-start nuclear fusion reactions. So, we might even see some of that power make its way back to us at some point. [Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory via Popular Science]
