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NEWS > SCIENCE > CALIFORNIA SCIENTISTS CREATE LARGEST EVER LASER/DEATH RAY
CALIFORNIA SCIENTISTS CREATE LARGEST EVER LASER/DEATH RAY
May 1 2010
Livermore, CA – Science fiction has for decades been promising and teasing advances that rarely come to be. Oftentimes that genre not only predicts things incorrectly, but misses other advances entirely. Previous to the growth of integrated 
networks in the 1980’s nothing even remotely resembling the Internet exists in any fiction. Cell phones, home computers, and hosts of other creations and inventions came totally out the blue as far as fiction is concerned. Of course, few lament things that people failed to predict, but do mourn inventions that simply haven’t come to pass.
Whether it’s flying cars, time travel, or even hover boards the tantalizing hopes of things to come that never came, and likely never will, sting more than any other failed prediction. One creation that has never reached the full potential as described by creators of fiction is of course the laser beam which in mush writing of the future is a standard piece of equipment but in our present is used to cure short sightedness and burn away 
unwanted hair. That underwhelming potentiality hasn’t stopped the dreamers however, including a group of researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California who are building the largest laser ever, the length of three football fields, in an effort to finally bring the laser to its full potential.
“We have a very high confidence that we will be able to ignite the target within the next two years. This would prove that controlled fusion is not only possible but practical, which would then extend to thousands of other applications,” said Bruno Van Wonterghem, a manager for the project. “Obviously not everyone will have access to a gigantic laser like we do but when it is successful we will be able to loan it out to anyone who might want to create fusion power or whatever else it is they want to do. The possibilities are endless really.”
The stated goal of the project is to create nuclear fusion, a technology that recreates the fuel that powers the sun, providing the world with clean and unlimited power.
“It’s an interesting effort and if successful would be one of the greatest advances that
science has ever made. Perhaps the greatest, but the flashier success here isn’t fusion, it’s the laser itself. Aside from the fact that lasers are really cool, one this big could have all kinds of applications, though because of the size they would be limited. This isn’t like the phasers on Star Trek, this thing is much, much bigger than that,” said Scrape TV Science analyst Dr. Howard Poe. “However, if you were to create a series of orbiting mirrors you would have a formidable system that could deal with any threat in the world. By simply changing the angles of the lenses you could focus on virtually any target in any nation on the planet, making the world a much safer place at least in the short term.”
The research is being funded primarily by the United States government which also holds patents on the laser.
“The threat is the laser gap. Like we saw during the Cold War when one nation has something, others will want it. Now a dozen countries have nuclear weapons because one got it. I think it won’t be long before we see nations such as Russia and China pursuing their own giant lasers in an effort to keep up with the U.S.,” continued Poe. “The biggest threat however is the potential for some mad genius to get a hold of the technology and create his own giant laser. Fictions has always shown us all these crazy mad men with super technology but that has never happened in real life, but perhaps they were just waiting for the tech to catch up to their ambitions. Either way, the laser genie is now very much out of the bottle and that means rough times ahead.”
Even if the lasers are turned to more malevolent uses it is believed they will be really cool.
Anna Phillips, Science Correspondent
NEWS > SCIENCE > CALIFORNIA SCIENTISTS CREATE LARGEST EVER LASER/DEATH RAY
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