Thirty-seven years after the world was first introduced to the Death Star in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and the universe’s most power laser is finally scheduled to be brought to fruition right here on planet Earth.
The Death Star, or more formally, the High-Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS), is being built in the Czech Republic by the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) Beamlines organization and is projected to be turned on by 2017. ELI Beamlines is an EU-funded lab that also has significant contributions from Lawrence Livermore lab in the United States. This is the first internationally backed laser research facility in history.
HAPLS has been nicknamed the Death Star by developers who project that it will emit a laser 100,000 times more powerful than all of the Earth’s power stations combined – that’s 1023 watts of energy per square centimeter.
This new technology has huge implications in the fields of biology, medicine, physics and materials sciences. Physicist and HAPLS project manager Constantin Haefner states that this is the first time that scientists will be able to repeat a laser burst at 10 times per second. The laser will produce emissions at a speed of 1/100,000th of a billionth of a second.
Laser technology is advancing at an ever-increasing rate. Seiffert Industrial is proud to be on the cutting edge of these advances and looks forward to meeting all of your laser tech needs.
*Video courtesy of DeepSkyVideos
