Thursday, April 10, 2008

One Point Twenty One Gigawatts...pikers

Some smart guys at the University of Texas have powered up a really strong laser. It's over one petawatt. I never heard of a petawatt before and I'm guessing neither have you. Lets put this in perspective. If 1.21 gigawatts is enough to send a Delorean through time, a petawatt can do it 826,446 times.

The pulse only lasts a tenth of a trillionth of a second but for that brief moment in time, it's the brightest light in the universe, brighter even than a gamma ray burst.

That's just sick.