This is awesome who doesn’t like lasers!  Now the question is, what will they use this thing for?

Scientists in Japan have set the record for the most powerful laser ever fired, producing a 2 petawatt pulse – that’s 2 quadrillion watts – using a device known as the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiment (LFEX). While they could only sustain it for a mere one-trillionth of a second, the team claims it had a concentrated energy equivalent of 1,000 times the world’s electricity consumption.

Located at Osaka University, the LFEX laser projector is about 100 metres long, and combines four carefully positioned glass ‘lamps’ to amplify a laser beam over and over as it travels along the length of the device. This set-up allowed the team to produce an incredibly concentrated amount of power while consuming only a couple hundred joules of energy, which is about as much power your microwave uses in 2 seconds.

Let’s find out more and check out a video from the control room during a laser firing last year

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