Giant super-laser passes 500 TRILLION watts The National Ignition Facility has followed up on its March firing with yet-another record, flicking the switch on a pulse that topped 500 trillion watts and 1.85 megajoules of UV laser. Back in March, the NIF at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had previously fired a 411 trillion watt pulse. As noted by the lab, …
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Oh, why so sour? :-P
IIRC the OP only talked about 'igniting'. And in a discussion about fusion I would take that to mean nuclear not chemical burning. (I can't speak for nuclear physicists, but astrophysicists always use ignite and burn to describe the onset and process of nuclear fusion - so stars burn hydrogen and eventually most will get hot enough to ignite helium.) That said, I think you were right and the OP didn't know what he was talking about.
The idea it was 'chemistry' was mine. It was meant as a joke. And you're right: they're reactions of nucleons not orbital electrons. But once you get over that, plasmas, particularly those found in stellar interiors, posses the kind of potentials and gradients and rich complexity you see everywhere else in chemistry; this is the chemistry of the Weak force, rather than the Electromagnetic one. Still I'm happy chemists aren't interested in the really hot stuff.
*ponders whether I should tell him the real definition of a metal*
"Pray enlighten us all as to what water burns to ?"
Ooh, simples, according to Wikipedia:
16/8 O + 1/1 H → 17/9 F + 0.60 MeV
17/9 F → 17/8 O + e+ +ν_e + 2.76 MeV (half-life of 64.49 seconds)
17/8 O + 1/1 H → 14/7 N + 4/2 He + 1.19 MeV
Please don't try this at home! Any questions?
Top questions, with answers of yes, and maybe.
We have a claimed 500 trillion watt laser. That means that in one second (if it could run for that long) it would release 500 trillion joules of energy, or about five times the energy of the bomb that hit Nagasaki. That has big hole making potential, in my book, although it's small by modern nuclear weapon standards.
Could that plunge the US into darkness? Only if carefully divided amongst critical power distribution nodes, so you'd need to move your laser energy about with pin point accuracy. People might notice when a truck labelled Silverburn Laser Services Ltd turns up, vapourises an electricity grid switching station, and drives off again. Having said that, total US electricity generating capacity is "only" about 1 terawatt. Assuming your laser is 5% efficient (OK as a ball park) then you need 10 peta watts of input, so ten thousand times more power than the entire generating capacity of the US, so if you over-rode all the safety systems and linked the US grid together (whilst stroking a long haired white cat) you could cause a national black out by sucking all the power out of the grid (and melting it at the same time).
Trigger another recession? Probably not, as we've got a big enough one at the moment to mask most things. Added to which destruction usually begets reconstruction, and that appears to create growth. Even if you used your one second of tera-laser in downtown New York city, things would certainly be very bad indeed for the inhabitants. But would that matter in London, Los Angeles, Berlin etc? Probably not (and vice versa if you chose one of those to experiment on).
The article does not explain the mechanism of the laser. So we don't know if its a regular laser, pulse laser, x-pulse laser or a heavy laser.
Since its pre-fusion tech, I would be willing to assign it the same damage as an Inner Sphere small laser.
Sounds so good when you use terms like megajoules. Then you convert it, and find that the cutting edge of laser death in the twenty first century is a beam that's zipping out about half a kWh, worth about 5p when bought from the 'leccy board.
In El Reg units, wouldn't that be about 23 cups of tea?
"The Death Star is in firing position, Lord Vader"
"The emperor will be pleased - put the kettle on commander"
We have a National Ignition Facility? Holy shit, that's cool. A national facility to burn things. Man, I love this country - we have the NIF, Freedom, Liberty, The Right To Bear Arms*, and Britney Spears. What more could we ask for?
* - which the bears aren't too happy about, TBH
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