The Texas Petawatt Laser 174
Roland Piquepaille notes the hype surrounding what the University of Texas at Austin is calling the world's most powerful laser. During a tenth of a femtosecond this laser is 2,000 times more powerful than all the power plants in the US, and is brighter than sunlight on the surface of the Sun. On his own blog Roland points out that UT's is not the first petawatt laser; that distinction belongs to a system installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1996.
Re:We're all wondering... (Score:3, Interesting)
not to be a pedant, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
And a cheap laser pointer can't be focused to that size.
But of course you're right. They're just going for the unwashed public wow factor.
Re:We're all wondering... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:We're all wondering... (Score:2, Interesting)
In case this was a serious question: Giant capacitors, connected in parallel.