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Sledgstone

New laser will be powerful enough to rip apart space itself

By Sledgstone, in News Column

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Sledgstone    8,672

Sledgstone
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http://dvice.com/archives/2011/04/new-laser-will.php

The European Commission has approved the construction of three gigantic new research lasers, with the option for a fourth that would, for an instant, be several hundred times more powerful than the entirety of the power generated by our civilization. The hope is that this will be enough energy to actually conjure virtual particles out of nothingness.

At peak power, the fourth laser in Europe's Extreme Light Infrastructure project (or ELI) will combine ten beams into a single pulse measuring 200 petawatts. 200 petawatts is significantly more power that our entire race generates at any given moment, and in fact more total power than Earth receives from the sun.

Needless to say, this is not the type of laser that you just turn on and wave around for your cat to chase. The only way that this massive amount of power is able to be harnessed is if the amount of time that it's being used for is insanely small. The 200 petawatt pulses will only last 1.5 x 10^-14 second, which is about the same amount of time that it takes for light to travel from one side of a human hair to the other, if you shave the hair down by 90%.

The point of all this is to try to explore some of the weirdness of quantum mechanics, which suggests that space is actually a giant party of random particles that are popping in and out of existence too fast for us to see. The hope is that a laser this powerful might actually be able to tear apart the vacuum of space-time itself, revealing the matter and antimatter underneath.

The fourth ELI laser is scheduled to start ripping up the fabric of the universe in 2017, and no, nothing could possibly go wrong, why do you ask?

Wow.. I bolded the part I found the most interesting.. "The hope is that a laser this powerful might actually be able to tear apart the vacuum of space-time itself" I have a feeling that quote might come back to bite someone in the ass when a rip in the fabric of space opens up to consume us all. O_O

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Eppy    3,446

Eppy
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wow that sounds amazing...i need one XD

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"That fairy needs to stop shouting in my ear, or I'm going to throw her friend I have trapped in the bottle into a lava pit or something. HEY, LISTEN! No, YOU listen. If something's important, just say so without yelling at me. Or fly over to it and change color like you usually do. Just because I'm busy mowing the lawn and hoping I'll find some spare change, doesn't mean I can't hear you." - Link

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