The United States recently made a bold move to shore up support amongst 10-year-old boys the world over by firing the most powerful laser in history. Just how powerful was this laser? A single shot created 2.03 million joules of ultraviolet energy — the shot only lasted for a fraction of a second, but during that brief moment this laser output 1000-times more energy than all the power plants in the United States combined.
The method by which they achieved such a powerful blast is pretty interesting too — they started with a tiny, 1/billionth of a joule laser, split it into 48 separate beams, magnified the power of all those beams, then further split those 48 beams into 192 beams which they also amplified. Eventually all the separate beams are recombined into a foot-wide death beam straight out of Dragonball Z.
What will this monster laser be used for? Causing explosions of course. Specifically the plan is to fire it at a tiny hydrogen fuel cell in order to create the first nuclear fusion based power plant. Also Godzilla. This thing would totally f–k up Godzilla.
via Gizmodo