Rest assured, we've seen some wicked frickin' lasers in our day, but apparently, even the
two-kilowatt rendition that heats coffee in mere seconds can't hold a
candle ray of light to HERCULES. Intentionally named in all caps by University of Michigan gurus in order to highlight its awesomeness, said laser contains 300 terawatts of power (or 300 times the capacity of the entire US electricity grid) and could "help scientists develop better proton and electron beams for radiation treatment of cancer." Still, we can't help but conclude with UMich's own description of this masterpiece: "If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of [HERCULES]." Damn.
[Via
Physorg]
posted Feb 16th 2008 10:04PM
Hella, I wonder when these will be on starships!
Guess we know whats going to happen at the next Michigan Ohio State game!
HAI I WONDR IF IT PLAYZ TEH DOOM!
Sigh...I knew I should have just gone out to the bars tonight.
I thought we had some kind of international law forbidding that we have weapons in space.
Though, it would be awesome to have something like this.
RED ALERT, FIRE PHASERS. :O
I want one!
yeaaa .. deathstar laser.
@ Ignatius
I wonder if placing just a reflector in space, andbouncing a laser off of it would count as a weapon in space...
Loop Hole?
ignatius: we also signed international laws that say we wont torture people, wouldn't invade other countries unless they broke certain un resolutions, etc.
personally i would say the us DEFINITELY has lasers in space. you dont think reagan tossed a few up there during the whole sdi thing? i'm guessing he did.
LAYZSHUR EYE!!!
Sorry, saw Mystery Men the other day for the first time in forever.
Man, primaries are bringing out the crazies. You guys can politicize anything...
@ dave
spread offense + hella wicked laser = awesome
Michigan now has the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it.
I wonder if the students put a giant Jiffy Popper in the Professor's house and then used a prism to spread the laser over said Jiffy Popper after hijacking the weapons test of the laser.
(I'm really surprised that there have been no Real Genius references)
Hopefully the evil forces of COBRA(the enemy)don't get their scaley mits on this.
I think this deserves a solid, WoW. just wow. Now we can vaoprize people into nothing.
100% agree
now they just need to attach it to a shark...
Now how can this possibly have anything to do with the World of Warcraft?
Imagine just like shooting this at random things...
like apples, water, or even diamonds...actually I think the diamond would like make it go everywhere and kill everyone in the room.
You spelled it "WoW" completely accidentally?
O_o
Dude. Shady.
Your wife is going to divorce you if you don't curb your obsession.
Simpsons did it.
Don't Lase me bro, don't Lase Me!
What are they aiming it at in this test? If this thing is as powerful as "all the sunlight shining toward Earth [focused into] one grain of sand," wouldn't it burn a hole right through their lab, killing everyone outside the facility who crossed into the laser's line of fire?
Im just trying to clear this up. How does it contain that much power? I dont understand. Whos footing the bill?
Apparently the tuition of some of those poor students :S.
"the pulsed laser beam lasts just 30 femtoseconds. A femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second."
the tax payers of michigan whos economy is failing, U of M is a public university funded by the STATE OF MICHIGAN. Nice to know my tax dollars are hard at work building cool lasers and funding projects for other engineering students when im paying through the nose to go to a freakin community college.
One of my prof. worked on this project. According to him, they use crystal lenses to condensate low intensity, large area rays into high intensity and small area ones. Then they collect the laser by trapping it between two mirrors. They repeat the process until enough photons are collected, then move onto next stage where they repeat the same process. It involves several stages and after each stage, the later becomes more and more intense.
A common saying in laser literature is; "There are as much femtoseconds in one minute as there are minutes in the entire age of the universe." ;-)
And for everyone wondering, WTF, they have got to have huge condensator banks there, go search on how a laser works and remind yourself that power is energy per second :-P.
(Gee, I actually know this stuff... yes I work with "fricking lasers"... PROFESSIONALY (NOOOO I don't want to be a nerd! :-P))
It's powered by lightning. There's gigawatts, then there's terawatts (which this needs 300 of), then there's jiggawatts, which as everyone knows is exactly the power given by a bolt of lightning. Does that clear this up?
By my rough calculations, we're only looking at .3 joules per pulse assuming the pulse only lasts 1 femtosecond (1*E-15 s). 14 pulses would give 1 cal. At 1 pulse per second, this laser would take 2.87 days (247635.3 s) to heat up a 12oz (.355 L) cup of coffee (delta T = 50°C) also assuming no loss of heat due to evaporation and conductive leakage.
"which scientists theorize would generate matter by merely focusing light into empty space. "
Now THAT would be truly remarkable!
That makes no sense at all.
Matter doesn't just appear in empty space. O.o;
Ignatius: go back to school. you can turn matter into energy and energy into matter. e=mc^2. duh.
Yes it does....ever heard of quantum mechanics? It is real, although very anti-intuitive.
Yes, as everybody has had the chance to actually study quantum mechanics and physics. :P~
everyone that has finished public high school has had to learn about it.
so...
unless you're from a 3rd world country or prepubescent, you should know about it
e=mc^2. is for mass into energy.
e/c^2=m is for energy into mass
@N3RD
Actually no they don't, if they take gr. 12 physics then sure but otherwise highschools don't tend to cover quantum mechanics. Although I do agree that people should know what one of the most famous equations in the universe means.
Of course you can turn energy into matter. How do you think the holodecks on Star Trek work
Ok just shoot me now.
Matter is simply trapped energy. Shouldn't be that hard to do that...
Then again, I did get my picture taken on the bridge of the Enterprise D last night. And ordered tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
It happens all the time, and is called pair production. two particles--one matter, the other antimatter--spontaneously pop into existence. This is fine since their net mass is zero. If they collide (and they typically do, a short time later), they annihilate one another. You pretty much owe your existence to this behavior (big bang).
@ maveric
ever tried burning someting?
@ carl
the big bang theory is dying. You yourself said that energy=>matter equals one matter and one antimatter. If so, where is all the antimatter? Also, where is all of the population 3 stars which, according to the Big Bang, make up all of of the matter larger then He? THERE JUST ISN'T ANY
Wait I don't understand, if it puts out the power of 300 times our power grid or what ever, Then how the hell do you power the damn thing.
I guess they do it the same way they do with a particle collider, that is, fill up giant capacitors and wait till the thing gets full.
It lasts ONLY 10^(-15) seconds.
At 300*10^(12) Watts for 10^(-15) seconds, it uses up 0.3 Joules.
This is equivalent to a 60W lightbulb being turned on for 0.05 seconds.
@ Amped
They might have made the solar panels in the 1950s and have been collecting it ever since. Or they might have been using the 'Trapped Wind' method of energy storage...[http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/05/excess-wind-energy-to-be-stored-underground-for-future-use/]
Wow, that sounds incredible! Now will it blend?
Go Blue! :-)
Here's our solution to getting rid of that deorbiting satellite!!
Seriously....why not?
It'd probably blow a tiny pin-hole in it.
Porcupine Tree FTW!
How does this compare to NIF at LLNL?? Chart plz
It doesn't require THAT much power. The photons are excited in an intricate cavity as shown in the picture to amplify its energy.
What are they getting so excited about? :P
YAY i live in ann arbor!!
Wow!
Most awesome quote in the end.
go michigan.
Someone get the sharks...
It only lasts 30 femtoseconds..that's why you don't need 300 times of the US power grid
We need bigger sharks...
i wanna see one of these at rave
take out a few fuckin dirty ravers
Someone should sneak it out to the next Burning Man.
But honestly, I forgot all about laser development. How the heck are we supposed to make our Star Wars fantasies come true if we don't start getting the lasers up to par?
Seems the technology was invented by a frenchman.
I'm sorry I said that ;)
That's ridiculous.
'nuff said
Yay now I can finally get a decent tan!
pff...Val Kilmer did this more than 20 years ago.
DAMMIT, why doesn't this comment system go above "highest ranked"?
Another case of movie fantasy coming to reality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoT-h0S1gkE
I'm still looking for that inflatable slide.
Just don't point it at someone's eye now.
erv we are putting this in your yard. should take care of the rodents diggin up the flowers.
try using THAT at your next office presentation
"It can project a spot on the moon! Or, at closer range, cut through solid metal. Come, I will show you."
screw projecting a spot on the moon, this thing will bore a hole through the moon if you leave it on for more than a few microseconds.
How marketable are these ass kicking lasers? We Michiganders needs some money FAST.
"You May Fire When Ready"
So how exactly do they power this?
a femto-array of triple A's
Now witness the power of this fully armed and operational battle station!
Hopefully they've learned and not left a womp rat sized hole that leads to the core of the laser.
Next story: the power in the entire state of Michigan fails due to an experiment gone bad.
So THIS is what they've been doing instead of playing football.. I get it.
...I apologize, engadgeteers, I shoulda gone out to the bars tonight, as well.
Mount this baby on a battle ship and let the fun begin.
For treating cancer... hmmm.... Please don't point that thing at my ass. The onlything i want to come in contact with that has the 'power of the sun' is Sunkist Orange...
Its sunny d....
ya know, i thought so, but for some reason switched to the other. Sunny D it is.
"The laser can produce this intense beam once every 10 seconds, whereas other powerful lasers can take an hour to recharge."
It's a pr0nstar laser!
Other commercial lasers. Look up HELLADS. This is small-time stuff as far as total energy transfer and duty cycle, though impressive for a short pulse.
Maybe they could use this laser to blow up the spacecraft that is targeted for destruction by a missile.
houchens:
"Maybe they could use this laser to blow up the spacecraft that is targeted for destruction by a missile."
Not likely. The laser pulse is 30 femtoseconds in duration. It's diameter is 1.3 microns.
To destroy something, you must transfer ENERGY to it. Energy is the time-integral of power. Intensity is the amount of electromagnetic energy passing through a unit area per unit time. In other words, the energy is very low in this laser. It's just extremely focused and of a very short pulse width.
I have emailed one of the profs on this project for info on his pulser though. That's what I'm curious about....300 TW in 30 femtoseconds??? Wow.
Most intense in the universe? We'll see when some aliens come to kick our butts.
Typical defeatist traitor attitude.
Go Earth!
Nice job Michiganders now skynet is sure to use this to its advantage
Most powerful laser in the universe? How do they know what the aliens have, huh?
There's nothing I like to see more than zip ties holding something together on a 300 terawatt laser.
When you get to the point of such a powerful laser, are the little yellow caution stickers even worth the bother of putting them on?
So, when will we get the youtube-condensed DIY-version of this? I already have a couple of targets in mind.
In other news, the Moon was mysteriously blown up by what appears to be a laser coming from Michigan University and is being replaces by a giant space station.... yeah you see where this is going.
How do you power something that needs 300 times what the entire US power grid can produce? O_o
Pshaw. You can't even mount it on a shark.
Whatever.