500 Trillion Watt Laser Breaks Records

[Artemis923]

Don't be to proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.

 

[hawk533]

Well, if the beams lasted a second, it would release 500 TJ of energy, or about the equivalent energy of 120,000 tons of TNT (roughly). That would have taken a nice big chunk out of California. Instead, the beams last a small fraction of a second. At a millionth of a second, it's about 240 lbs TNT equivalent energy. At a nanosecond, about 1/4 lb TNT equivalent. The nanosecond beams would kill a human being, and the microsecond beams would Jackson Pollack everything for several dozen meters. If the beams lasted a picosecond, on the other hand, it might be survivable by a human being (probably blinding, but survivable).

The power alone isn't enough to tell, you also need the duration. I'd bet on something like a nanosecond.

If you check the wikipedia entry on the National Ignition Facility, it mentions that: "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) produced on July 5, 2012, a historic record-breaking laser shot. The NIF laser system of 192 beams delivered more than 500 trillion watts (terawatts or TW) of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to its target" This would seem to imply something around 4 nanoseconds.

 

[antipunt]

Obligatory: "Vegeta... what is its power level?!?"

 

[bigdork]

Unfortunately, fusion produces a lot of neutrons, and neutrons + normal stuff = high level radioactive waste. It's just not the panacea that science fiction and bad thrillers have made it out to be. Hell, the sun's 90 million miles away, and it still gives some of us cancer.

There are some proposals for aneutronic fusion reactors, which avoid this problem, but even by fusion power standards those proposals aren't terribly realistic.