Lasers reaching their limit

[n2doc]

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2010

Somebody is going to have to break the news to Darth Vader. His Death Star's planet destroying potential is going to be way behind schedule. Research scheduled to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters shows that lasers are already close to reaching their maximum intensity and that the next generation of lasers currently being developed might be able to reach that limit.

In 1997, an experiment at SLAC sent 47-billion eV electrons from its 2 mile long accelerator and collided them with a one trillion watt green laser to create a monstrous electromagnetic field. When the electrons and the photons from the laser impacted, they created higher energy gamma-ray photons, these gamma-ray photons then collided with photons in the laser beam again and shattered the vacuum as matter was spontaneously created from light within the experiment.

Creating light from matter is rather ordinary in terms of physics. But the SLAC experiment was the first to produce the opposite, and while the effect had been expected for some 50 years, the equipment hadn't existed to test it experimentally. It is known amongst physicists as creating "spark in a vacuum." When the electromagnetic field has enough energy, light becomes matter as a positron-electron pair is produced.

more

http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2010/08/lasers-reaching-their-limit.html

[itsrobert]

1. huh?

"Somebody is going to have to break the news to Darth Vader. His Death Star's planet destroying potential is going to be way behind schedule."

Darth Vader had that technology a long, long, long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far, far away.

[Arctic Dave]

2. They are only trying to throw us off the trail.

They are actually building the Deathstar on the dark side of the moon. That was cheney's "secret location". He was not pleased with the delays and had to make a visit.

[damntexdem]

3. What does it matter?

And is it coherent?

;-)

[Zadoc]

4. The most powerful laser are around 1.5 petawatts

And I can live with that.