Scientists plan $1.5bn laser strong enough 'to tear the fabric of space'

[jimmy olsen]

I think I played a video game that started out like this. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055360/Giant-1bn-laser-strong-tear-fabric-space-built-Britain.html#ixzz1cKpBM5Nh

Scientists plan $1.5bn laser strong enough 'to tear the fabric of space'

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 9:02 AM on 31st October 2011
A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain.

The major scientific project will follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider and will answer questions about the universe.

The laser will be capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it will be similar to the light the earth receives from the sun but focused on a speck smaller than a pin prick.

Scientists say it will be so powerful they will be able to boil the very fabric of space and create a vacuum.

A vacuum fizzles with mysterious particles that come in and out of existence but the phenomenon happens so fast that no-one has ever actually been able to prove it.

It is hoped the Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would allow scientists to prove the particles are real by pulling the vacuum fabric apart.

Scientists even believe it might help them to prove whether other dimensions actually exist.

Professor John Collier, a scientific leader for the ELI project and director of the Central Laser Facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, Oxfordshire, said the laser would be the most powerful on earth.

'At this kind of intensity we start to get into unexplored territory as it is an area of physics that we have never been before,' he told the Sunday Telegraph.

The ELI ultra-high field laser, which will be completed by the end of the decade, will cost £1bn and the UK is among a number of European countries in the running to house it.

The European Commission has already authorised plans for three more lasers which will become prototypes for the ultra-high field laser.

Scientists hope the laser will also allow them to see how particles inside an atom behave and it is hoped it might be able to explain the mystery of why the universe contains more matter than previously detected by revealing what dark matter really is.

HOW IT WILL WORK

The ultra-high field laswer will be made up of 10 beams - each more powerful than the prototype lasers.

It will produce 200 petawatts of power - more than 100,000 times the power of the world's combined electricity production but in less than a trillionth a second.

The energy needed to power the laser will be stored up beforehand and then used to produce a beams several feet wide which will then be combined and eventually focused down onto a tiny spot.

The intensity of the beam is so powerful and will produce such extreme conditions, that do not even exist in the centre of the sun.

[crazy canuck]

Excellent.  Aim it at Greece.

[KRonn]

Hmm.... I'm not sure I like this idea.      

[Tamas]

Excellent.  Aim it at Greece.

[Slargos]

So the Large Hadron Collider didn't work, and now they're going to make the attempt with a super-powered laser? Who the fuck keeps funding these crazy "scientists" hell-bent on destroying our reality, and why'?

[Neil]

The LHC couldn't have destroyed our reality.  I can't think of a mechanism by which it could.

[Ideologue]

The LHC couldn't have destroyed our reality.  I can't think of a mechanism by which it could.

No kidding.  The best cosmic rays have managed to do is fuck up Ben Grimm's face, so why would the weak man-made version be any scarier?

[PJL]

I'm worried about this. They could end up discovering that the normal vacuum of space is actually a false one and create the real vacuum by mistake. In which call nothingness cosumes space at the speed of light. Which would make the hype of a black hole being caused by LHC tests look like a Sunday picnic.

[Scipio]

I'm worried about this. They could end up discovering that the normal vacuum of space is actually a false one and create the real vacuum by mistake. In which call nothingness cosumes space at the speed of light. Which would make the hype of a black hole being caused by LHC tests look like a Sunday picnic.

On the plus side, it ends the sovereign debt crisis.

[Razgovory]

I'm worried about this. They could end up discovering that the normal vacuum of space is actually a false one and create the real vacuum by mistake. In which call nothingness cosumes space at the speed of light. Which would make the hype of a black hole being caused by LHC tests look like a Sunday picnic.

Actually wouldn't the effect for us be the same?

[PJL]

The LHC black hole scenario doesn't eliminate reality, and it's effects are localised. The other experiment would ultimately destroy the universe.

We'd both be dead in either case, but at least all the atoms & molecules in our bodies would still exist in one from or another in the black hole.

[Caliga]

You should probably contact the ELI project guys and let them know.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Promises promises.

[Ideologue]

The LHC black hole scenario doesn't eliminate reality, and it's effects are localised. The other experiment would ultimately destroy the universe.

We'd both be dead in either case, but at least all the atoms & molecules in our bodies would still exist in one from or another in the black hole.

My understanding is that a miniature black hole can't exist for very long.  It would evaporate almost instantaneously.

Vacuum decay is potentially more serious (if we're even living in a false vacuum to begin with), but again, it seems to me that super-high energy natural processes would have already produced a vacuum metastability event if they could.  I mean, is the EPI laser really going to generate higher energy densities than nature has already produced?

[Neil]

My understanding is that a miniature black hole can't exist for very long.  It would evaporate almost instantaneously.

You are correct.  Hawking radiation and all that.  Moreover, even if you produce a tiny singularity, it's still not that dangerous because the mass is pretty low, and mass is a pretty important factor in the gravitation equation.

Vacuum decay is potentially more serious (if we're even living in a false vacuum to begin with), but again, it seems to me that super-high energy natural processes would have already produced a vacuum metastability event if they could.  I mean, is the EPI laser really going to generate higher energy densities than nature has already produced?

My guess is probably not.