lasers tagged posts

Lasers could Heat materials to Temps hotter than the Center of the Sun in only 20 quadrillionths of a second

Theoretical physicists from Imperial College London have devised an extremely rapid heating mechanism that they believe could heat certain materials to degrees in much less than a million millionth of a second. The method could be relevant to thermonuclear fusion energy, where scientists are seeking to replicate the Sun’s ability to produce clean energy.

The heating would be ~100X faster than rates currently seen in fusion experiments using the world’s most energetic laser system at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA. Researchers have been using high-power lasers to heat material as part of the effort to create fusion energy for many years...