Nuclear waste? Cancer? Shoot at it with the world’s biggest laser!
EVERYONE knows that laser beams are ace. They go PYOW! and ZZAP! and make things explode in a most entertaining manner.
And now, lasers are going to be aimed at things in real life thanks to the EU spending 700 million euros to build the world’s most powerful laser beam! So we’ll be seeing baddies and planets blown up, right? WRONG. This megalaser is going after nuclear waste and cancer!
Important, yes. Exciting, no.
The Extreme Light Infrastructure project has obtained funding for this huge project which will see lasers being fired that are 10 times more powerful than any yet built. They’ll be so strong that they’ll be able to create subatomic particles in a vacuum, similar to conditions that could’ve caused the very existence of the universe as we know it.
That’s a bloody big laser.
And so, with this mondomachine, the power burped out of them could deteriorate the radioactivity! It could cure cancer! Imagine going to the doctor. Imagine them standing you at the end of a tunnel. And firing a gigantic laser beam at you. JUST IMAGINE!
Coordinator Nicolae-Victor Zamfir says: “We can’t find in nature, any phenomenon with such an intense power like the one that will be generated with this laser. We expect to see the first results of our research in one or two years after the centre becomes operational.”
It gets better.
“We haven’t advertised the project yet properly, possibly also because we didn’t have the EU’s approval.”
That’s right! We’ve got an unapproved madman with a gigantic laser at his disposal! This can only end in crazy demands from a secret underground HQ and the threat of the entire world being blown-up, just like in an action film! What’s not to like about that?
And where is the proposed base? The research centre is near Bucharest, so that’s fine isn’t it? Should we need to send in a superhero, it’s nice to know that it is near a city. Wait. What?
“There’s no direct public transportation from the centre of Bucharest – you need to change the bus and then hitchhike for those private minibuses,” Zamfir said.
Ladies and gentlemen, we’re officially doomed.
Photo: Physicist Dr. Theodore Harold Maiman holds up the original first laser which he devised, demonstrated, and patented in 1960, in his office in Los Angeles, Calif., on May 4, 1981.
Posted: 29th, October 2012 | In: Technology Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
