100 Petawatt lasers could tear apart vacuum by 2023

In 2016, the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. achieved an unprecedented 5.3 million billion watts, or petawatts (PW). The lights in Shanghai do not dim each time the laser fires, however. Although the pulses are extraordinarily powerful, they are also infinitesimally …

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Later in the 2020s Zettawatt lasers and Yottawott lasers in 2030 will explore extreme physics

Detailed exawatt laser systems are being designed now. Pulsed lasers are rapidly reaching higher power by shortening the pulses and increasing the power. Multiple ten petawatt systems are either operating or being completed now. 2018 and 2019 will see several 50, 100 and 200 Petawatt laser systems. The peak power of pulsed laser systems is …

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Modifying the national ignition facility to exawatt short pulses with existing technology

An exawatt-scale, short-pulse amplification architecture based upon a novel pulse compressor arrangement and amplification of long-duration chirped beam pulses is described. This architecture is capable of extracting the full, stored energy of a NIF or NIF-like beam line and in doing so produce from one beam line a near-diffraction-limited, laser pulse whose peak power would …

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Generating abundant matter and antimatter will become easy with Exawatt lasers by 2021

State-of-art laser systems in 2016 are capable of delivering a laser pulse with intensity up to 2 × 10^22 W cm−2. Multi-Petawatt and ten PetaWatt lasers have been built and are expected to reach ∼10^24 W cm−2 and beyond. This opens the door for studying light–matter interactions as well as QED effects in unexplored domains. Diverse schemes have been …

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In-body incubation of IVF embryos

Women having IVF can now incubate embryos in their own bodies before they are implanted in the womb. Results from a clinical trial suggest the incubation device could work as well as conventional IVF and be far cheaper. Cylindrical in shape, INVOcell is held in the vagina by a flexible diaphragm. The embryos are kept …

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New glasses and liquid cooling will enable Exawatt lasers with at least one shot per minute and a path to near term commercial nuclear fusion

There are currently petawatt lasers in Japan and the USA. The EU has funded several ten petawatt lasers. Japan and the USA also have ten petawatt laser projects funded. Japan recently fired a 2 petawatt laser and believe this could be a pathway to commercial nuclear fusion. Ultrapowerful lasers have been increasing in power by …

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Instead of Helmet displays and joystick, quadrapelegic uses neural implants to fly F35 Simulator

Jan Scheuermann has been paralyzed since 2003 because of a neurodegenerative condition. In 2012, she agreed to be fitted with two probes on the surface of her brain in the motor cortex area responsible for right hand and arm movements. In the last two years, she has tolerated those probes better than expected; as a …

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China dominates Aluminum and Magnesium production with cheap power but US trying to get back by halving energy needed

World Aluminum production is about 55 million tons per year. There has been a dip with the recent economic slowdown. There is growing global demand for aluminium, which is estimated to reach 70 million tonnes per year by 2020. The world produces about 6 million tons per year of magnesium. China produces about 66% of …

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Five dollar Spock and Five dollar Bill Murray

The Bank of Canada has said that it is not illegal to deface or mutilate banknotes. The announcement was made after actor Leonard Nimoy’s death last week set off a craze of marking-up banknotes. The drawings make the country’s former Prime Minister, Wilfrid Laurier, look like Spock, Nimoy’s famous Star Trek character. SOURCES – BBC …

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High and mid range estimates of Russian Casualties in Ukraine compared to US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan

The estimated number of people killed in eastern Ukraine since April 2014 has now passed the 6,000* mark, in spite of successive ceasefires, the UN Human Rights Office announced Monday, saying the escalation in fighting in recent weeks, particularly near Donetsk airport and in the Debaltseve area, resulted in hundreds of deaths, both civilian and …

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Altered T cells reduces the amount of HIV virus in infected people

Sangamo BioSciences of Richmond, California, says it has found a way to protect the T cells that HIV attacks first, so they can live to fight another day. The approach entails temporarily stopping a patient’s antiretroviral therapy and removing T cells carrying the CD4 receptor. This surface protein is the doorway by which the virus …

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