Aug 20

Curiosity rover warms up its laser with basaltic rock blast

Posted in: Today's Chili

DNP Curiosity rover blasts basalt with laser 'for science,' claims not to be 'ill tempered'

Intrepid 6-wheeler Curiosity perhaps protested too much when it tweeted “Yes, I’ve got a laser beam attached to my head. I’m not ill tempered; I zapped a rock for science.” NASA turned the rover‘s high-powered laser loose with 30 pulses of a million watts each, reducing a thin layer of the chosen stone, dubbed N165 “Coronation,” to plasma. The resulting spectrum was then analyzed by the on-board “ChemCam” to determine its composition, and the US/French team who developed the system said it’s working even better on Mars than it did on terra firma. The results are now being studied, but if we had a laser beam on another planet, we’d be firing it all over the place — in the name of “science,” of course.

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Curiosity rover warms up its laser with basaltic rock blast originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Aug 2012 11:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 15

NIF sets record with 500 TW laser shot, lab-based nuclear fusion not far behind

Posted in: Today's Chili

NIF sets record with 500 TW laser shot, lab-based nuclear fusion not far behind

In an effort to recreate the fusion reaction that occurs in start formation, the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, CA has been building up to some extremely powerful laser shots. Back in March, researchers fired off 411 terawatts, and we know that kind of power doesn’t come cheap. NIF’s latest test shot, fired July 5th, set a new record with 192 lasers producing more than 500 trillion watts of peak power and 1.85 MJ of ultraviolet laser light. Mind you, that’s more than a thousand times more energy than the United States uses at any given moment, not to mention a hundred times more power than other lasers can fire consistently. More record-setting shots are sure to come, and in addition to enabling research on harnessing nuclear fusion, NIF’s mega-lasers are helping inform the design of new laser facilities being built in China, Japan, Russia, France and the UK.

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NIF sets record with 500 TW laser shot, lab-based nuclear fusion not far behind originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Jul 2012 06:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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