Japan Fires The World's Most Powerful Laser

[Aepsilons]

Researchers at Osaka University are claiming to have fired the most powerful laser in the world. The 2-petawatt (two quadrillion watt) pulse lasted just one picosecond (a trillionth of a second).

For a rough comparison, in 2013, a 50 kilowatt (50,000 watt) laser shot down a drone two kilometers away.

Osaka's mega-powerful laser is called LFEX, or Laser for Fast Ignition Experiments, and measures more than 300 feet long.

While two petawatts is a formidable amount of power, the idea of a petawatt laser isn’t new. The United States has a few of their own, notably a one-petawatt laser at the University of Texas at Austin.

Michael Donovan, associate director for the Texas Petawatt, says that it’s important to remember when talking about lasers of this size that, while the power output is immense, the energy used is actually very little.

“The energy of the Texas Petawatt, 150 to 200 Joules, is about that in a cup of coffee or a very hard tennis serve,” Donovan said via email. ”It is the energy used by a 100 watt light bulb in 2 seconds.” Power is energy over time, and since one picosecond is a very small amount of time, the power output turns out to be immense.

The scientists at Osaka University claim that their pulse (2 petawatts at 1 picosecond) is about 100 times the energy of UT Austin’s laser, and twice its peak power.

“Two petawatts, that’s a lot,” said Julio Soares, senior research scientist at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When asked what a laser of that power could be used for, Soares responded, “Well, to blow things up.”

We don’t have any footage from the University of Osaka, which is now working on a 10-petawatt laser, but you can check out the Texas Petawatt laser in this video.


Also, it wouldn't be a story about a huge laser if we didn't mention the Death Star blowing up Alderaan. If you want to compare this laser's output to some other calculations, we've rounded up some of the best articles on whether the Death Star really had the juice to blow up a planet.



Japan Fires The World's Most Powerful Laser | Popular Science

 

[Aepsilons]

Nihonjin's comment: So...Japan can into Death Star?

@Technogaianist @Peter C

 

[Gufi]

Nihonjin's comment: So...Japan can into Death Star?

Um ummmm please take me along on your death star
on topic with revamping the nuclear energy plan, I think Japan will be covered by an extensive layered laser defence against multiple threats in the coming decades.

 

[Cossack25A1]

I am still waiting for my laser rifle that can fry both man and machine.

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

lol ok, i used these types of lasers before. ultrafast lasers always have insane peak powers but their total energy is nothing to write home about, being about 10-100 joules. thats the energy to heat a bottle of water slightly. to actually blow shit up you need high total energy.

 

[qwerrty]

most powerful laser is in the US NIF with 1.85 MJ of energy. second most powerful is in france LMJ with 1.80 MJ. china's new upgraded SGIII is third place with 400 kJ. new chinese 1.3 MJ SGIV currently under construction will still be in third place once completed

 

[XiaoYaoZi]

lol ok, i used these types of lasers before. ultrafast lasers always have insane peak powers but their total energy is nothing to write home about, being about 10-100 joules. thats the energy to heat a bottle of water slightly. to actually blow shit up you need high total energy.

飞秒激光?
Japanese live in their own world.

 

[billyong]

most powerful laser is in the US NIF with 1.85 MJ of energy. second most powerful is in france LMJ with 1.80 MJ. china's new upgraded SGIII is third place with 400 kJ. new chinese 1.3 MJ SGIV currently under construction will still be in third place once completed

'The world's largest peta watt (PW) laser LFEX, which delivers energy up to 2 kJ in a 1.5 ps pulse...'
lol, compare it to all those three, its just a toy gun.
NIF, LMJ, SGIII are deigned to find a way to achieve laser based nuclear fusion.
LFEX? shoot some birds I guess.

 

[CCP]

'The world's largest peta watt (PW) laser LFEX, which delivers energy up to 2 kJ in a 1.5 ps pulse...'
lol, compare it to all those three, its just a toy gun.
NIF, LMJ, SGIII are deigned to find a way to achieve laser based nuclear fusion.
LFEX? shoot some birds I guess.

NO.....,"the laser only produced enough power to run a microwave for about two seconds..."or "the LFEX emitted enough energy to warm up your breakfast burrito for two full seconds “
Japanese Scientists Set World Record for Most Powerful Laser Beam | Digital Trends


How many single beam drivers japan bought from US for this?

Only US, China and France can produce high powered Laser drivers and only US and China can produced those drivers independently.

Compare to the energy to heat your lunch , here is what Chinese Laser can do at 1998.

missile warhead and 155mm shell.

 

[Keel]

How about this one?

PLA breaks through laser technology bottleneck

 

[Aepsilons]

The Death Star weapon is here! Japan fires world's most powerful laser to produce energy equal to 1,000 times the planet's power consumption

• LFEX device produced 2-petawatts (2 quadrillion-watts) of energy
• The energy used for the laser beam itself would only be powerful enough to run a microwave for around two seconds, the Osaka researchers claim
• The high output was produced by firing the beam for just 1 pico-second

Japan claims to have fired the most powerful laser ever created.

Researchers in Osaka were able to produce a 2-petawatt laser beam using a device known as the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiment (LFEX).

The power of the 'Death Star'-like beam is equivalent to 1,000 times the world's total electricity consumption, the scientists claim.

+3
The 328ft (100 metre)-long LFEX device has strategically-placed glass panels that are used to amplify the laser beam. The team were able to produce such a high output by concentrating the power to 1 pico-second, or around a trillionth of a second

While it produced a huge amount of power, the energy required for the beam itself is equivalent to that needed to power a microwave for two seconds.

The team were able to produce such a high output from low energy by only firing the laser beam for 1 pico-second, or a trillionth of a second.


To amplify the beam's power, energy was applied to strategically-placed glass panels along the 328ft (100 metre)-long LFEX device.

These glass lamps were able focus the beam to boost its energy as it passed through.

+3
In the experiment, energy was applied to glass sections using devices similar to fluorescent lamps. These glass lamps were used to boost the energy of the beam as it passed through



'With heated competition in the world to improve the performance of lasers, our goal now is to increase our output to 10 petawatts,' said the institute's Junji Kawanaka, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the university

To put that into context, according to Popular Science, a 50,000 watt laser successfully took down a drone just a mile away.

That 50kW laser was 10 billion times less powerful that the one used in Japan.

Up until today's announcement, the world has only ever witnessed a 1-pettawatt laser created by the University of Texas, Austin.

Not only did the Japanese laser generate twice as much power, but the team says it also has 100 times as much energy as its Texas rival.

The laser, liked to the Death Star laser in Star Wars, is currently mainly of scientific interest rather than having any real-world purpose.

Details of the experiment have been published in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.

+3




Japan fires world's most powerful laser and is compared to Death Star weapon | Daily Mail Online

 

[CCP]

The Death Star weapon is here! Japan fires world's most powerful laser to produce energy equal to 1,000 times the planet's power consumption

• LFEX device produced 2-petawatts (2 quadrillion-watts) of energy
• The energy used for the laser beam itself would only be powerful enough to run a microwave for around two seconds, the Osaka researchers claim
• The high output was produced by firing the beam for just 1 pico-second

Japan claims to have fired the most powerful laser ever created.

Researchers in Osaka were able to produce a 2-petawatt laser beam using a device known as the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiment (LFEX).

The power of the 'Death Star'-like beam is equivalent to 1,000 times the world's total electricity consumption, the scientists claim.

+3
The 328ft (100 metre)-long LFEX device has strategically-placed glass panels that are used to amplify the laser beam. The team were able to produce such a high output by concentrating the power to 1 pico-second, or around a trillionth of a second

While it produced a huge amount of power, the energy required for the beam itself is equivalent to that needed to power a microwave for two seconds.

The team were able to produce such a high output from low energy by only firing the laser beam for 1 pico-second, or a trillionth of a second.


To amplify the beam's power, energy was applied to strategically-placed glass panels along the 328ft (100 metre)-long LFEX device.

These glass lamps were able focus the beam to boost its energy as it passed through.

+3
In the experiment, energy was applied to glass sections using devices similar to fluorescent lamps. These glass lamps were used to boost the energy of the beam as it passed through



'With heated competition in the world to improve the performance of lasers, our goal now is to increase our output to 10 petawatts,' said the institute's Junji Kawanaka, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the university

To put that into context, according to Popular Science, a 50,000 watt laser successfully took down a drone just a mile away.

That 50kW laser was 10 billion times less powerful that the one used in Japan.

Up until today's announcement, the world has only ever witnessed a 1-pettawatt laser created by the University of Texas, Austin.

Not only did the Japanese laser generate twice as much power, but the team says it also has 100 times as much energy as its Texas rival.

The laser, liked to the Death Star laser in Star Wars, is currently mainly of scientific interest rather than having any real-world purpose.

Details of the experiment have been published in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.

+3




Japan fires world's most powerful laser and is compared to Death Star weapon | Daily Mail Online

"the laser only produced enough power to run a microwave for about two seconds..."or "the LFEX emitted enough energy to warm up your breakfast burrito for two full seconds “

 

[XiaoYaoZi]

This type of ultrafast laser's power record (picosecond-type or femtosecond-type) is refreshed about every half year. If it is used in nuclear fusion project, the time length it last will be very important indicator, the picosecond-level is too short. But that is just right the bottleneck of Japan, so they select the abnormal direction of ultrafast laser trying to realize the controlled nuclear fusion, which has been proven infeasible by US NIF project. In this field of controlled nuclear fusion, Japan has far lost the competiveness to China or US or France.

 

[Echo_419]

The Death Star weapon is here! Japan fires world's most powerful laser to produce energy equal to 1,000 times the planet's power consumption

• LFEX device produced 2-petawatts (2 quadrillion-watts) of energy
• The energy used for the laser beam itself would only be powerful enough to run a microwave for around two seconds, the Osaka researchers claim
• The high output was produced by firing the beam for just 1 pico-second

Japan claims to have fired the most powerful laser ever created.

Researchers in Osaka were able to produce a 2-petawatt laser beam using a device known as the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiment (LFEX).

The power of the 'Death Star'-like beam is equivalent to 1,000 times the world's total electricity consumption, the scientists claim.

+3
The 328ft (100 metre)-long LFEX device has strategically-placed glass panels that are used to amplify the laser beam. The team were able to produce such a high output by concentrating the power to 1 pico-second, or around a trillionth of a second

While it produced a huge amount of power, the energy required for the beam itself is equivalent to that needed to power a microwave for two seconds.

The team were able to produce such a high output from low energy by only firing the laser beam for 1 pico-second, or a trillionth of a second.


To amplify the beam's power, energy was applied to strategically-placed glass panels along the 328ft (100 metre)-long LFEX device.

These glass lamps were able focus the beam to boost its energy as it passed through.

+3
In the experiment, energy was applied to glass sections using devices similar to fluorescent lamps. These glass lamps were used to boost the energy of the beam as it passed through



'With heated competition in the world to improve the performance of lasers, our goal now is to increase our output to 10 petawatts,' said the institute's Junji Kawanaka, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the university

To put that into context, according to Popular Science, a 50,000 watt laser successfully took down a drone just a mile away.

That 50kW laser was 10 billion times less powerful that the one used in Japan.

Up until today's announcement, the world has only ever witnessed a 1-pettawatt laser created by the University of Texas, Austin.

Not only did the Japanese laser generate twice as much power, but the team says it also has 100 times as much energy as its Texas rival.

The laser, liked to the Death Star laser in Star Wars, is currently mainly of scientific interest rather than having any real-world purpose.

Details of the experiment have been published in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.

+3




Japan fires world's most powerful laser and is compared to Death Star weapon | Daily Mail Online

Impressive

 

[cnleio]

Researchers at Osaka University are claiming to have fired the most powerful laser in the world. The 2-petawatt (two quadrillion watt) pulse lasted just one picosecond (a trillionth of a second).

For a rough comparison, in 2013, a 50 kilowatt (50,000 watt) laser shot down a drone two kilometers away.

Osaka's mega-powerful laser is called LFEX, or Laser for Fast Ignition Experiments, and measures more than 300 feet long.

While two petawatts is a formidable amount of power, the idea of a petawatt laser isn’t new. The United States has a few of their own, notably a one-petawatt laser at the University of Texas at Austin.

Michael Donovan, associate director for the Texas Petawatt, says that it’s important to remember when talking about lasers of this size that, while the power output is immense, the energy used is actually very little.

“The energy of the Texas Petawatt, 150 to 200 Joules, is about that in a cup of coffee or a very hard tennis serve,” Donovan said via email. ”It is the energy used by a 100 watt light bulb in 2 seconds.” Power is energy over time, and since one picosecond is a very small amount of time, the power output turns out to be immense.

The scientists at Osaka University claim that their pulse (2 petawatts at 1 picosecond) is about 100 times the energy of UT Austin’s laser, and twice its peak power.

“Two petawatts, that’s a lot,” said Julio Soares, senior research scientist at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When asked what a laser of that power could be used for, Soares responded, “Well, to blow things up.”

We don’t have any footage from the University of Osaka, which is now working on a 10-petawatt laser, but you can check out the Texas Petawatt laser in this video.


Also, it wouldn't be a story about a huge laser if we didn't mention the Death Star blowing up Alderaan. If you want to compare this laser's output to some other calculations, we've rounded up some of the best articles on whether the Death Star really had the juice to blow up a planet.



Japan Fires The World's Most Powerful Laser | Popular Science

@Nihonjin1051
Any photo from Japan news media/forums about the new energy development, like laser nuclear fusion project ?
Ths !