World’s strongest ‘death beam’ from China still can’t fry an egg, but it could blind an enemy drone
Chinese scientists set a new record with powerful laser, which has potentially strong military applications but hampered by fact it only lasts for the blink of an eye.
Researchers from Shanghai have created the most powerful laser beam ever made with potentially wide-ranging applications in fields from nuclear physics to high-tech weaponry, according to their paper published in the latest issue of the journal Optics Letters.
The beam reached a peak power of 5.13 petawatts (1 petawatt is equal to 1 billion millions watts), dwarfing the record set recently by Japanese scientists.
But the latest breakthrough appears to be grounded at present by an Achilles’ heel: It cannot sustain its peak power output for long, and lasted for less than 30 femtoseconds (30 quadrillionths of a second), according the to the team.
The new record was generated at the State Key laboratory of High Field Laser Physics under the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics. The team was led by Professor Li Ruxin.
About six months earlier, researchers in Osaka produced their own trailblazing beam when they fired what at the time ranked as the world’s most powerful laser. The 2-petawatt (two quadrillion watt) pulse lasted just one picosecond (a trillionth of a second).