Military Laser almost here - 500 Terawatt laser developed

[Diziet Sma]

Fifteen years of work by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) team paid off on July 5 with a historic record-breaking laser shot. The NIF laser system of 192 beams delivered more than 500 trillion watts (terawatts or TW) of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to its target. Five hundred terawatts is 1,000 times more power than the United States uses at any instant in time, and 1.85 megajoules of energy is about 100 times what any other laser regularly produces today.

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-nif-histor ... -shot.html

[Pleb]

Now all they need to do is shrink it down to this size and all of humanity will have to bow before me:

[SandJ]

Fifteen years of work by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) team paid off on July 5 with a historic record-breaking laser shot. The NIF laser system of 192 beams delivered more than 500 trillion watts (terawatts or TW) of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to its target. Five hundred terawatts is 1,000 times more power than the United States uses at any instant in time, and 1.85 megajoules of energy is about 100 times what any other laser regularly produces today.

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-nif-histor ... -shot.html

In the comments:

Wow, 1.85 MJ - that's over 440 Calories, as much as a McDonald's Chocolate Triple Thick Milkshake. It's also 514 watt-hours: as much energy as leaving a 100-watt light on for little more than 5 hours.

[JensAyton]

Yes, but 514 Wh divided by 500 TW is just over a trillionth of an hour. I bet you can’t drink a McDonald’s Chocolate Triple Thick Milkshake anywhere near that fast.