Prague to host world’s strongest laser

To us, Prague will always be the Eastern European capital of roast duck, potato dumplings and attractive, cheap pilsner. But come 2015, the previous Soviet Bloc city may also become home to the realm’s strongest laser , as portion of the eu Union’s Extreme Light Infrastructure project. Per plans released by the European Commission , the laser will produce peak power within the exawatt range (resembling 1000000000000 megawatts). So, for a particularly small fraction of a second, the beam will generate a million times more power than the full U.S. electric grid. Believe it or not, that’s lots of time to conduct experiments which could reveal new cancer treatments and the right way to care for nuclear waste . Breakthroughs in either category will be incredible for the €700 million (about $1 billion) project, which also includes future plans to construct two similar lasers, and a 3rd that’s twice as powerful the Prague installation — roughly an identical current draw as an HTC Thunderbolt .

[Image courtesy of Instructables ]

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This post is tagged: european commission, former soviet bloc, infrastructure project, new cancer treatments, one million times