Posted on 05/21/2025 6:33:11 AM PDT by Red Badger
Imagine harnessing power on a scale almost unimaginable.
A cutting-edge laser facility called ZEUS at the University of Michigan has reached a groundbreaking level of power. It generated a brief pulse of light with a power output exceeding the entire world’s electricity consumption by a factor of one hundred.
The powerful laser facility has set a new U.S. record by achieving two petawatts (2 quadrillion watts) of peak power, almost doubling that of its closest competitors.
Interestingly, the laser’s immense power lasted just a fleeting 25 quintillionths of a second. Yet, in that fleeting moment, ZEUS can unlock profound scientific discoveries.
“This milestone marks the beginning of experiments that move into unexplored territory for American high field science,” said Karl Krushelnick, director of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science.
Its applications are wide-ranging, including medicine, national security, materials science, astrophysics, plasma science, and quantum physics.
Powerful laser bursts The school gymnasium-sized Zettawatt Equivalent Ultrashort laser pulse System (ZEUS) operates out of the Gérard Mourou Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. BBC reported that the facility’s walls are lined with 24-inch (60 cm) concrete shielding to contain radiation.
Reportedly, the ZEUS laser is the successor to the HERCULES system, which had a maximum power of 300 terawatts.
As a pulsed laser, ZEUS fires incredibly short bursts, just a few quintillionths of a second in duration.
The incredibly robust and concentrated laser energy will allow experts to explore fundamental quantum mechanics, simulate cosmic events, and much more.
The innovative laser approach involves a longer gas cell filled with helium.
When the powerful laser pulse strikes a gas, it generates plasma, a mix of free electrons and ions. These electrons are then accelerated to incredibly high speeds by surfing the laser’s wake, a method called wakefield acceleration.
Using a less dense, longer target allows these electrons more time to accelerate, achieving unprecedented velocities.
This 2-petawatt milestone is a key milestone towards ZEUS’s “signature experiment,” which might happen later this year.
In this experiment, the accelerated electrons will collide head-on with laser pulses traveling in the opposite direction. The 3-petawatt laser pulse will be a million times more powerful — effectively a zettawatt-scale pulse — hence the name ZEUS.
Price tag of $16 million Funded by the National Science Foundation, ZEUS welcomes research teams from across the entire country.
Professor Franklin Dollar’s team at the University of California is leading the first user experiment at ZEUS.
The goal is to generate beams comparable in energy to those from massive, hundreds-of-meters-long particle accelerators, achieving 5 to 10 times higher energy than previously possible at the ZEUS facility.
During his doctoral research, Dollar utilized ZEUS’s predecessor to image a damselfly. This work demonstrated the potential of laser-like X-ray pulses for low-dose imaging of soft tissues.
“The fundamental research done at the NSF ZEUS facility has many possible applications, including better imaging methods for soft tissues and advancing the technology used to treat cancer and other diseases,” said Vyacheslav Lukin, program director in the NSF Division of Physics, which oversees the ZEUS project.
I wrote a story years (decades) ago that was published in a trash sci-fi pulp magazine (got $200!) about a guy who invented a time travel device but didn’t take into account the movement of the galaxy, the Sun, Earth etc and so ended up floating in space when he traveled back in time, and died.
I don’t remember the Asimov story, but I had to have been inspired by it, as I devoured his works.
A science writer who never heard of a magnetar or a supernova.
“the laser’s immense power lasted just a fleeting 25 quintillionths of a second”
now if they can get that to last 250 quintillionths of a second they’ll really have something!
I’ve always loved that cartoon! One of my favorites!🤣
And I understand the Democrats political power these days is measured in Fauxawatts
Right up until it catches it.
16 Mil a Zap!?!
.
Oh Well.
Thank you for putting into perspective. The hype in the article was a bit misleading.
Wonder what the SD for that experiment is...
Is this any better spent than on the Kalifornia high-speed rail?
Yeah, color me cynical but navel-focused scientists can happily spend $M/Billions on esoteric projects of no practical value.
There was supposed to be a big giant boom!
I think you are off on your powers of ten here. “Peta” is a metric prefix for 10^15. One quintillionth would be 10^-18 (millionth is 10^-6, billionth is 10^-9, trillionth is 10^-12, quadrillionth is 10^-15 — I personally had to work it out that way to make sure I got it right.)
So 2 PW is 2x10^15W. 25 quintillinths of a second is 25x10^-18. The energy released is thus the product of these or 50x10-3J. This is equivalent then to 0.05W for 1 second.
Doh, my bad. Just realized that my brain was somehow reading a capital “M” in your answer rather than the lowercase “m” that was actually there. Your calculation is of course absolutely right. My apologies.
Interestingly, the laser’s immense power lasted just a fleeting 25 quintillionths of a second
Sounds like this is modeled as an impulse function
The unit impulse function has zero width, infinite height and an integral (area) of one. We plot it as an arrow with the height of the arrow showing the area of the impulse.
2 quadrillion watts would turn a tank into a molten puddle.
Aliens already can do so.
https://tinyurl.com/bd58868p
Funny. Thank you.
Already been done!
“Real Genius” Jerry’s House of Popcorn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rthHSISkM7A&t=11s
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