Fusion technology breakthrough

[The King in Yellow]

found this article on Yahoo today.

The first laser beam that can burn as hot as the core of a star.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090530/ts_alt_afp/usitresearchmilitarylaser_20090530082418

my my, how our guns get bigger.

 

['Coatl]

Whoa...

 

[○]

Where do I buy one?

 

[Drake]

Pretty sure this means big things for fusion power.

 

[33]

This is undoubtedly awesome. However, you don't need hot or cold temperatures for fusion. You just need to isolate the system from the outside thermal vibrations and chaotic RF-energy that disrupts the fragile state required to superconduct (and thus enable fusion). NASA calls this "decoherence free subspace" but it just means quiet space. This is exactly related to why you can't get a cell phone signal in a subway tunnel.

If we could achieve the subway tunnel concept on a molecular level, macroscopic quantum phenomenon would be possible. In fact, the water molecules in the microtubules of your brain actually do this, hence why we have a quantum phontonic supercomputer as a brain.

 

[polytrip]

The previous laser installation at the lawrence livermore institute also managed to generate temperatures, higher then the core of our sun.
I'm a big fan of laser technology; if you can manage to harness something as basic as light, then you're on a high level of understanding some very elementary, important principles of nature. Seeing a laserbeam is like seeing the monolith in '2001 a space oddisey'.

 

[Phlux-]

Finally something that i want just as much as salvia darts

 

[970Codfert]

that's pretty incredible!

This is funny:

"We have invented the world's largest laser system," actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said

He must be so proud!

 

[richierich_931]

From what they say, it will put out more energy than what is put into it... Isn't that impossible with the laws of energy or motion or whatever...

Maybe they'll help some Alchemists finally be able to turn lead in to gold! :d


Funny that Yahoo has two different articles on the same thing...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090531/ap_on_sc/us_super_laser

 

[polytrip]

A LASER is not capable of generating more energy then is put into it.
That would aply to the nuclear fusion that it would be used for. However, it would be possible to concentrate energy in short pulses and each pulse would contain more energy than could be fed into it in the same period of time.
LASER's have a high energy yield of round 90% or more, where light bulbs have energy yields of only a few percent (this is one of the reasons why a 5 milliwatt LASER could make you permanently blind while a 45 watt light bulb won't). But yields higher than 100% are naturally impossible.

 

[Abraxas25]

Finally something that i want just as much as salvia darts

I don't know if the salvia dart concept is a running joke here or not, but I'm new, and that is one of the funniest things I've ever heard.