World’s most powerful laser to tear apart the vacuum of space
Due to follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider, the latest “big science” experiment being proposed by physicists will see the world’s most powerful laser being constructed.
Capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it would be equivalent to the power received by the Earth from the sun focused onto a speck smaller than a tip of a pin, scientists claim it could allow them boil the very fabric of space – the vacuum.
Contrary to popular belief, a vacuum is not devoid of material but in fact fizzles with tiny mysterious particles that pop in and out of existence, but at speeds so fast that no one has been able to prove they exist.
The Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would produce a laser so intense that scientists say it would allow them to reveal these particles for the first time by pulling this vacuum “fabric” apart.
They also believe it could even allow them to prove whether extra-dimensions exist.
“This laser will be 200 times more powerful than the most powerful lasers that currently exist,” said Professor John Collier, a scientific leader for the ELI project and director of the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, Oxfordshire.
“At this kind of intensity we start to get into unexplored territory as it is an area of physics that we have never been before.”
The ELI Ultra-High Field laser is due to be complete by the end of the decade and will cost an estimated £1 billion. Although the location for the facility will not be decided until next year, the UK is among several European countries in the running to host it.
The European Commission has already this year approved plans to build three other lasers that will form part of the ELI project and will be prototypes for the Ultra-High Field laser.
Due to sited in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, each laser will coast around £200 million and are scheduled to become operational in 2015.
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“tear apart the vacuum of space”..doesnt sound friendly really does it?
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This is no different than lighting a match or a candle wick with a match. It’s called kinetic molecular engergy and the intensity o a specific focal point can be blown away with a puff of air. Is there air in space? Or something that we could snuff and puff. Anyway, it seems like another reasonable investment to feed the starving of the world.
“Anyway, it seems like another reasonable investment to feed the starving of the world.”
werd..
SOrry….. But Dhorn, who are you? You seem to be the first post on EVERY single post that Seek writes…..
Honestly, that seems non legit… Sorry dawg.
Fast draw from the holster, but sometimes miss the target. The last comment was legit. “The kinetic molecular theory.”