I read an article at Techland that has me in disbelief. I am a bit skeptical of what they are reporting, but I have no facts or evidence to say they can't do what they claim. You need to take a look at the article and tell me if you believe the reporter. Tell me if you think a laser could be made that produces more power in a single beam than all of the world is using at any moment. I bet some of our friends in the electrical energy industry will say it can't be done.
I might be able to believe it if the beam is emitted in a very short pulse. Remember, power is a rate. Maybe that kind of power can be produced for an incredibly short period of time so that the total energy consumption is in the believable range.
Great. Just what Eastern Europe needs.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea, obviously, if this is theoretically possible, but my read is that the author of this article took what might be theoretically possible and unraveled it to its furthest conclusion. I'm skeptical that the gap between theory and implementation could be closed easily.
But ripping the space-time continuum? Wowza.
Yeah. I don't know so much about ripping space-time or anything, but I have been learning about very intense beams and how they interact with matter. The only things that happen in those cases is ionization of the molecules that the beam hits, and the beam self-focusing and then defocusing. There is another cool effect called self phase modulation, which is a fancy way of saying that the beam acquires new colors as it propagates at such high intensities. White light lasers can be made from green lasers using this effect.
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