US engineers have completed the world most powerful laser, capable of simulating the energy force of a hydrogen bomb and the sun itself.
The size of a football field, comprises of 192 separate laser beams, each travelling 300m in a one thousandth of a second to converge simultaneously on a target the size of a pencil eraser.
While the NIF laser is expected to be used for a wide range of high energy and high density physics experiments, its primary purpose is to help government physicists ensure the reliability of the nations nuclear weapons as they become older.
The NNSA, a semi-independent arm of the Energy Department, oversees nuclear weapons programs.
The NIF laser was proposed in the early 1990s, when the project's cost was put at $1 billion.Construction began in 1997. Its early years were marked by setbacks including trouble, eventually overcome, in keeping its critical optics perfectly clean and free of dust.
NIF is expected to ramp up power gradually in a series of experiments over the next year, culminating at a power level in 2010 to achieve what scientists call fusion ignition. enough heat and pressure to fuse hydrogen atoms in a tiny cylindrical target. so that more energy is released than is generated by the laser beams themselves.
That is what happens when a hydrogen bomb explodes and inside the sun, at its centre. It's also what scientists would one day like to achieve on a continuing basis to produce a clean, safe form of energy by fusing atoms instead of splits them apart.
Edward Moses, director of the NIF project who has led its development since 1999, said he is ever more confident that NIF will achieve fusion ignition.
NIF's 192 laser beams produce 60 to 70 times more energy than a 60-beam system at the
In addition to helping diagnose the functioning of nuclear warheads, the NIF laser is expected to be used in astrophysics, allowing scientists to mimic conditions inside planets and new solar systems.
