Scientists plan to tear hole in fabric of space

[Lord_Of_Change 9]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z1cKpBM5Nh

A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain.

The major scientific project will follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider and will answer questions about the universe.

The laser will be capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it will be similar to the light the earth receives from the sun but focused on a speck smaller than a pin prick.

Scientists say it will be so powerful they will be able to boil the very fabric of space and create a vacuum. A vacuum fizzles with mysterious particles that come in and out of existence but the phenomenon happens so fast that no-one has ever actually been able to prove it.

It is hoped the Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would allow scientists to prove the particles are real by pulling the vacuum fabric apart. Scientists even believe it might help them to prove whether other dimensions actually exist.

Professor John Collier, a scientific leader for the ELI project and director of the Central Laser Facility at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot, Oxfordshire, said the laser would be the most powerful on earth.

'At this kind of intensity we start to get into unexplored territory as it is an area of physics that we have never been before,' he told the Sunday Telegraph.

The ELI ultra-high field laser, which will be completed by the end of the decade, will cost £1bn and the UK is among a number of European countries in the running to house it. The European Commission has already authorised plans for three more lasers which will become prototypes for the ultra-high field laser.

Scientists hope the laser will also allow them to see how particles inside an atom behave and it is hoped it might be able to explain the mystery of why the universe contains more matter than previously detected by revealing what dark matter really is.

The ultra-high field laser will be made up of 10 beams - each more powerful than the prototype lasers. It will produce 200 petawatts of power - more than 100,000 times the power of the world's combined electricity production but in less than a trillionth a second. The energy needed to power the laser will be stored up beforehand and then used to produce a beams several feet wide which will then be combined and eventually focused down onto a tiny spot. The intensity of the beam is so powerful and will produce such extreme conditions, that do not even exist in the centre of the sun.

I for one welcome our new Chaotic overlords.

[Skgoa]

The only thing I can say to that is: cool.

[PeZook]

Physicists get to do the coolest shit nowadays.

[Ryan Thunder]

Long as it doesn't involve 'anti-mass spectrometers' or 'crystalline artifacts' we should be okay.

More seriously, this is fascinating, and I'm looking forward to reading about the implications of their findings.

[Lagmonster]

Cleaned out all the "I <heart> Cthulhu" spam. And I'm certain we've reached our quota of "I likes it!" one-liners, so think before you post.

[VarrusTheEthical]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z1cKpBM5Nh

The ultra-high field laser will be made up of 10 beams - each more powerful than the prototype lasers. It will produce 200 petawatts of power - more than 100,000 times the power of the world's combined electricity production but in less than a trillionth a second. The energy needed to power the laser will be stored up beforehand and then used to produce a beams several feet wide which will then be combined and eventually focused down onto a tiny spot. The intensity of the beam is so powerful and will produce such extreme conditions, that do not even exist in the centre of the sun.

I have to say that the last paragraph sounds suspiciously like the Death Star's superlaser. But with that said, I'm all for shooting holes in the Universe and seeing what leaks out.

[cosmicalstorm]

Having recently finished reading Schild's Ladder, this makes me slightly worried...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schild%27s_Ladder

[Alerik the Fortunate]

As in we should wait until we have affordable relativistic travel before attempting this? I don't think we've anything to fear. I'm pretty sure more extreme conditions exist in nature, probably in many parts of our galaxy (black holes, anyone?). I don't think we'll see any false vacuum decay from this.

[FaxModem1]

I'm having trouble here. How does a laser cut into the universe? I can understand it burning up the air around it or an object in it's path, but how does it make a hole in the universe and not just in the nearest wall?

Oh, and it better not be near Canary Warf, or we might see an Army of Cybermen.

[Simon_Jester]

It's an energy density thing. They're planning to cram so many photons into such a small volume of space that the amount of energy in that little region becomes great enough to cause Weird Things to happen... very very locally.

Basically, you know how a particle and an antiparticle collide and blow up in a spray of gamma rays? The plan here is to make that happen backwards- push a boatload of photons together and get particles out.

[Kanastrous]

I wonder if the NIF's laser system could be applied toward the same end.

[Thinktank]

So I take it that these Scientists need a serious dose of sci-fi horror movie education.

Thank the makers that this isn't called project Arrowhead or the like. When I read of this kind of experiment being planned all I can think of is Stephen King's: The Mist.

[Simon_Jester]

I wonder if the NIF's laser system could be applied toward the same end.

I don't think it's not big enough. If it was, someone would probably have made a proposal to do exactly that.

[Kanastrous]

I don't know that someone hasn't - to hear the guys there tell it, it's almost as though the nuclear-weapons-validation part is -really- what Congress wants them doing, and the whole 'hey we can explore laser fusion techniques' thing is just an afterthought.