US: World's largest laser now ready for use
31 Mar 2009 4:58 PM
After more than a decade of work and five billion dollars .. US engineers have completed the world's most powerful laser .. capable of simulating the energy force of a hydrogen bomb and the sun itself.
The federal Energy Department is to announce today that it has officially certified the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
The facility is the size of a football field and comprises of 192 separate laser beams .. each converging simultaneously on a target the size of a pencil eraser.
While the NIF laser is expected to be used for high-energy research .. its primary purpose is to help testing ageing nuclear weapons.
