Fox – World’s most powerful laser fires most powerful laser blast in history
Fox News – World’s most powerful laser fires most powerful laser blast in history
21 March 2012
The largest laser in the world was turned on for a fraction of a second last week — and it unleashed the most powerful laser blast in history.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) — a laser test facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. — turned on its 192 laser beams for a brief instant on March 15, unleashing a record-setting 1.875-megajoule blast into a target chamber.
The lasers were combined, gathered and focused through a series of lens into a 2.03-megajoule shot, said Ed Moses, NIF director — a record for the facility.
NIF hopes to dramatically increase the power of the laser shots by the end of year, intending to ultimately use the facility to harness the energy reaction that occurs naturally within the sun: fusion.
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