University of Texas fires up petawatt laser, HERCULES weeps

Just two months prior, we all stood in awe of the mighty HERCULES laser housed at the University of Michigan. Now, however, those 300 terawatts of power look mighty puny compared to the one petawatt potential claimed by the Texas Petawatt. Hailed as "the highest powered laser in the world" by Todd Ditmire, a physicist at the University of Texas at Austin, the device has the "power output of more than 2,000 times the output of all power plants in the United States," and in case that wasn't impressive enough, it's also "brighter than sunlight on the surface of the sun" -- but alas, only for a tenth of a trillionth of a second. Aside from totally ganking the geeky gloating rights from the Wolverines, the Longhorns will use the laser to study astronomical phenomena in miniature (and probably take over the world in short order).

[Via Physorg, image courtesy of University of Texas at Austin]

[matthewlikestoburn @ Apr 8th 2008 9:25AM]

me want

[LondonConsultant @ Apr 8th 2008 10:49AM]

...to aim at Ronaldo when he's in front of goal?

[rv @ Apr 8th 2008 1:29PM]

honeycomb?

[Josh @ Apr 8th 2008 2:57PM]

Hook 'em horns!

[Blackstar @ Apr 8th 2008 10:49PM]

"1.21 Petawatts!?!?...Great scott! .....What the hell is a Petawatt??!?!"

[matthewlikestoburn @ Apr 9th 2008 6:49AM]

...all of the above

[Jason @ Apr 9th 2008 8:19PM]

lol one of my professor talked about this and thought about taking a field trip during lecture to visit the laser a while I was still an engineering undergrad an year or so ago.

hook'em

[matthewlikestoburn @ Apr 8th 2008 9:26AM]

now.

[Brodie @ Apr 8th 2008 9:26AM]

I guess everything IS bigger in Texas...

[Acerguy @ Apr 8th 2008 12:13PM]

But can it play Crysis?

[Vesh @ Apr 8th 2008 12:43PM]

No, but it could cause a crisis.

[Ghen @ Apr 8th 2008 1:36PM]

Acerguy that doesn't even make sense. This thing might hook up to a computer that can play crysis but this is a laser. It more closely resembles a flashlight than anything that can play crysis.

Oh, and the meme is old too. Stop it.

[Mike @ Apr 8th 2008 9:28AM]

Mount it on the moon.

[Sukhminder @ Apr 8th 2008 11:31AM]

I bet you'll be asking for "1 MILLION DOLLARS"

[Mike @ Apr 8th 2008 12:30PM]

No, 100 Billion dollars...

[shayne @ Apr 8th 2008 9:29AM]

First comment! they can use the laser to blow up Michigan since im an Ohio State Fan

[Mike @ Apr 8th 2008 9:30AM]

Fail x 3

[Hero @ Apr 8th 2008 9:31AM]

Not even close.

[shayne @ Apr 8th 2008 9:50AM]

i meant MY first comment not THE first comment.

[a ham sandwich @ Apr 8th 2008 10:39AM]

hm! shocking you can read.

[Reader @ Apr 8th 2008 10:42AM]

Oh jesus, don't start a trend of people saying "my first comment"... I didn't think it could get any worse, until now.

[MBS @ Apr 8th 2008 11:19AM]

Long time reader, first time commenter here; I just love your show...

[jperry @ Apr 8th 2008 4:47PM]

I so agree with blowing up Ohio State though...

Hook 'em.

[Hero @ Apr 8th 2008 9:30AM]

"Did we get the power bill for this month yet?"
"Yeah, it came out to be $976,435.91"

[rv @ Apr 8th 2008 1:28PM]

watts is j/s, so if its a very small amount of time the power used is very small. And they said a ten trillionth of a second, so that comes out to about 100 J I think...

[Spencer @ Apr 8th 2008 9:32AM]

Too bad they're the longhorns and not the sharks. Then they could have sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads.

[Scott @ Apr 8th 2008 9:37AM]

Good to see that whole "global warming" thing isn't bothering researchers in every field...

Bill: "Hey bob, should we leave the laser idling over the weekend?"
Bob: "Yeah, why not... we won't have to wait for it to spool up on monday... and the DOD is footing the bill anyway..."

[ben @ Apr 8th 2008 10:18AM]

Except the fact a watt is a rate, not a measure of quantity. Something going 200,000,000 miles per hour isn't going to go very far if it only moves for a trillionth of a second.

[Scott @ Apr 8th 2008 10:26AM]

Ben : Thanks, I covered that in science in highschool... And I'm guessing that the super-capacitors storing the charge and the cooling of the facility housing all the equipment are all running on a single old ceiling fan are they?

[ben @ Apr 8th 2008 10:33AM]

If you want to complain about fans, I wonder if the server complex were engadget is hosted is running on a ceiling fan too? At least the laser is in the name of science (not that engadget isn't).

petawatt = 10^15
divided by
trillionth = 10^-12
is the same as 1000 watt/seconds. That's like 2-3 servers running for a second, probably doesn't generate all that much heat.

[ben @ Apr 8th 2008 10:34AM]

*where

[ben @ Apr 8th 2008 10:35AM]

and *watt-seconds, not watt/seconds

[Ghen @ Apr 8th 2008 1:41PM]

Or one really nice server 2008 machine with a few virtual servers via Hyper-V and the extra processing power taken up by Folding@Home

Ahh I can dream... half our servers are still 2k.

[Gorillamonk @ Apr 9th 2008 12:16PM]

it's all true, but you aren't thinking of it in relativity. It's true that if something is going 100mph, in one trillionth of a sec it doesn't go very far. But, compare that to everything else that is going 10mph, or slower.

[John P @ Apr 8th 2008 9:38AM]

"The University of Texas at Austin will be raising tuition fees for the third year in a row, citing rising health care and energy costs. Both may be related to a new laser device built at the school last spring."

[Tim Brown @ Apr 8th 2008 9:48AM]

Put one of those in your presentation laser pen, point it at anyone who mutters during the presentation and next trillionth of a nano second, you have a rapt audience. Minus one mutterer and all the seats behind them, an probably the wall, floor, ceiling and half the state. Still, it would be pretty cool.

[sully @ Apr 8th 2008 9:51AM]

Laser rifles? It's more likely than you think.

New at 11.

[macona @ Apr 8th 2008 11:39AM]

Old at 12

[Anonymoose @ Apr 8th 2008 9:54AM]

some people take their laser tagging too seriously.

[val @ Apr 8th 2008 9:54AM]

Lazlo Holifeld would be proud.

[IT-Accountant @ Apr 8th 2008 9:55AM]

This may sound like a dumb question, but if this laser produces more energy OUTPUT than 2000 times the power capacity of the US infrastructure, where does it get its power INPUT? Assuming that the laser is an 100% efficient energy conversion, then where would you get that much power? And if by some miracle this laser is producing terawatts of "free energy" (a physics impossibility) than why aren't we using it to supply the entire world's power needs instead of "studying astronomical in miniature"?

[Anonymoose @ Apr 8th 2008 9:58AM]

where's the power? easy.

*flexes*

[Clasifyd @ Apr 8th 2008 10:02AM]

I'm going to assume some kind of capacitor, thought I claim to be nothing close to an expert in the field. After all, it IS only tenth of a trillionth of a second. Thoughts?

[Chad @ Apr 8th 2008 10:03AM]

IT-Accountant, I was wondering the same thing. I assume because of the extremely short duration of "laser on" that something like that is possible. Does anyone know the answer to this?

[Hero @ Apr 8th 2008 10:05AM]

Watts are measure in Joules per second. So if the laser ran for 1 second it would use one petawatt. By only running for a tenth of a trillionth of a second it doesn't use all that power.

[milton359 @ Apr 8th 2008 10:06AM]

On paper it probably has that potential. Reality would obviously be another story.

[Anonymoose @ Apr 8th 2008 10:10AM]

still no believers?

*grits teeth - keeps flexing*

[Jon Acheson @ Apr 8th 2008 10:10AM]

While it's firing, it uses that much energy, but apparently it only fires for a tiny fraction of a second. They must have some kind of huge capacitors to store up the charge.

Like most lasers, it seems that efficiency on this thing is pitifully bad.

[stefan @ Apr 8th 2008 10:13AM]

Well... a petawatt is 1'000'000'000'000'000 Watts. right?

We have that burst for a tenth of a trillionth of a second... that's. 0.0000000000001 seconds.

now just counting the 0s I'm getting something like 100 watts.

That's no more than what an average Engadget readers gadget-collection consumes whilst on standby / charging.

Even if the lasers efficiency is at only 1%, the computers in said lab will probably eat up more power.

[g4scott @ Apr 8th 2008 10:13AM]

There is a giant bank of capacitors used to power this thing.

When they say that it produces more energy output than 2000 times the capacity of the US, take the energy capacity of the US for 1/10th of a trillionth of a second, and multiply that by 2000.

The energy output could power the US for 0.000000002 seconds (or something like that...)

Now, if they operated this thing continuously for a couple of seconds, then yeah, the lights in your house may blink...