The most powerful laser in the US recently produced 2 quadrillion watts of power
The most powerful laser in the US recently produced 2 quadrillion watts of power
news.engin.umich.edu
The US has a new most powerful laser
8 comments
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I have a decent grasp of physics but I understand nothing at all about this article. Melp me out, please?
What use is a high energy beam that last for an almost immeasurably short period of time? How can it even be said that it has this power output, in such a short time?
"Zero-POW!-zero" sounds unbelievable to normal humans. No ramp-up? No sizzling out?
On such a short time scale, what's the actual Wh used? It can't be very much, so the actual energy delivered can hardly do anything at all, either.
And finally, what's even the point of this? What's the purpose? What's the end goal? Why?
many possible applications, including better imaging methods for soft tissues and advancing the technology used to treat cancer
I don't see how that works out.
Thank you for indulging me. I appreciate any responses.
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The article linked to a list of applicable research. https://news.engin.umich.edu/2019/09/most-powerful-laser-in-the-us-to-be-built-at-michigan/
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The laws of physics are best understood at standard temperatures and pressures, where we have loads of data. To understand how physics works in more extreme circumstances, we have to create those circumstances and then measure what happens. At CERN, they accelerate particles very fast, smash them together, and record and analyze what happened. This is how they observed the Higgs boson and measured its properties.
From the article, it looks like one of the experiments is to shoot the laser into an oncoming high speed beam of electrons. One of the things they're looking for is if this high amount of energy causes matter and anti matter pairs to spontaneously form and annihilate. Our theories predict this but the more ways we can measure it the more we can learn, for instance about what happened right after the big bang, and why we were left with matter instead of everything annihilating symmetrically.
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…on a drum kit?!?!?!!!
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Goes to 11
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Aim it at Epstein island
8 comments
The laser produced power? How do we harness that so we can power the world with lasers? 🤔
It's no different than an engine producing power. I think you are confusing it with "energy".