Japan Fires Most Powerful Laser In The World (September 18, 2015)

[ChrisReid]

Scientists in Japan have test fired a new laser capable of a 2 petawatt blast. This is equivalent to 2 million gigawatts (2,000,000,000,000,000). As Wing Commander fans are well aware, the TCS Behemoth was capable of directing 500 million gigawatts to one lancing point. Though it sounds like we're already surprisingly close to 2669's premier levels of destruction, our current technology could only maintain the burst for a trillionth of a second, so there is still quite a bit of room to mature the gun before we're vaporizing planets. The version in Japan also lacks keel mounts and laser turrets, and we all know how that goes...

Scientists in Japan have set the record for the most powerful laser ever fired, producing a 2 petawatt pulse - that???s 2 quadrillion watts - using a device known as the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiment (LFEX). While they could only sustain it for a mere one-trillionth of a second, the team claims it had a concentrated energy equivalent of 1,000 times the world's electricity consumption.
Located at Osaka University, the LFEX laser projector is about 100 metres long, and combines four carefully positioned glass 'lamps' to amplify a laser beam over and over as it travels along the length of the device. This set-up allowed the team to produce an incredibly concentrated amount of power while consuming only a couple hundred joules of energy, which is about as much power your microwave uses in 2 seconds.

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Original update published on September 18, 2015

 

[Farbourne]

I beg to differ.

Well, I guess, technically, this may be the world's most *powerful* laser, by the scientific definition of "power" (energy transferred per time, or rate of energy transferred), but that definition of power is not what the layman thinks of when they hear "powerful". What most people think of when they hear "powerful" is "how much energy do you get", and by that standard, this laser is nowhere near the king of the hill.

The most *energetic* laser in the world is in the US, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:

https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/what-is-nif

By my math, the Japanese laser mentioned above produces 2 petawatts of power for a picosecond, which works out to 2 x 10^15 W * 1 x 10^-12 s = 2,000J = 2 kJ. While 2 kJ is a decent amount of energy, it pales in comparison to NIF, which delivers "nearly 2 million Joules" (1.85 MJ, to be precise) according to the linked FAQ, which would make it ~1000 x more energetic than that Japanese laser, even if its peak power is "only" 0.5 petawatts.

Although they do "cheat" in that NIF is actually not a single laser, but rather 192 lasers fired simultaneously at the same point.

NIF is so energetic, they can recreate the pressure and temperature conditions that exist inside a star in a laboratory (granted, a *big* laboratory). Don't you just love big science?

Fun fact: it was also the setting for the Enterprise's engine room in Star Trek: Into Darkness.

 

[Pedro]

I don't know, I think most peoples views of powerful would conincide with the definition - taking it to the obvious extreme, if time is a factor where do you draw the line? Where would a laser that can be run indefinitely fit in?

And the cheat of using 192 is a pretty big one when you're talking about the most powerful laser.

Still I rather like the idea of there being a prototype Behemoth that had to remain in position for an extended period of time, it would make for an interesting defensive mission.