mining the moon. ? how? It takes energy to make energy, so where is it coming from? Are they talking about fusion here?
Yes. It's one of the ways to heat a material high enough for fusion. Pulse lasers have unbelievable amounts of power really, even a modest desk-sized one can have upto kJ energies.
What they mean is the time-average - an H-bomb will take n milliseconds to release its energy, this does it in 25ns.
anyone a little worried by this prospect? I think its great for mankind but I fear what would happen if things went wrong...a star on earth?....hmm the thought is very worrying as theres only a little we know about such things but so so much we dont and that gives plenty of room for things to go wrong. I just hope these folks know what they are doing...
Hmmm, interesting, however the death star springs to mind, lots of lasers making 1 big one... Im a firin mah lazor!!!
Don't take this the wrong way, but that's not going to happen. It's a very long way from being an actual star, it's just a good word to describe the experiment that everyone can picture. It's a similar situation to the whole "LHC makes a black hole" rubbish. Whilst it might be attractive to think about a particle accelerator making a black hole and ruining Switzerland, it's just bollocks.
Yeah, it's 900Kg, not 900g, to produce 4MJ. Still not exactly "nuclear bomb" scenario. Even small tacical nukes are measured in kilotonnes. This thing produces more like the sort of power a couple of large dumb bombs dropped in afghanistan release, than it does the fat man's 21Kt equiv. of TNT.
