The blog & portfolio of Matthew J. Rogers

Do NOT look directly into the laser

February 17, 2008

Fricken' huge laser

The University of Michigan (or “That place up north”, for those of you also from rival universities) has created the “most intense laser in the universe,” as Engadget put it. The monster laser, named HERCULES (no, it’s not an acronym — they made it all caps because…well, because it could kill you) has 300 terawatts of power. For comparison, the entire U.S. electric grid has a capacity 1 terawatt. Forget those piddling lasers that can burn your skin — they haven’t said anything to that effect about HERCULES, but I’m willing to bet this thing could punch a hole clear through your body in a millisecond, if not just outright vaporize you. As the team from U. Mich. put it: “If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of [HERCULES].”

Wow.

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2 comments

  • Hewlett February 18th, 2008 at 10:27 am

    Sweet. In Real Genius, they only needed a few gigawatts to vaporize a human target from space (or pop crapload of popcorn). Now if we only had a rotating mirror and a targeting system . . .

    The article didn’t say, but it looks like a hybrid laser of both green and violet light. Maybe it’s part of the beam filtering or processing to use different wavelengths, I really don’t know what I’m talking about though.

    A light effect on the picture makes it look like they’re firing it at the whiteboard.

  • Vincent Lee May 18th, 2008 at 7:46 pm

    Well, for ponderance lets just say this: If this thing can “supposedly” produce 300 terawatts of power, yet in comparison the entire U.S. power grid has a capacity of 1 terwatt. Why don’t we use the technology or knowledge gained from this for a better purpose? And also, where the hell are they getting the energy to power this thing? Why can’t they reverse the solution to supply us with energy?… What a waste of time and energy to produce such concepts…

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