Burning a hole in reality--design for a new laser may be powerful enough to pierce space-time

[Bayard]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/14/1885432/-Burning-a-hole-in-reality-design-for-a-new-laser-may-be-powerful-enough-to-pierce-space-time?detail=emaildkre

Prepare to be inundated with a fresh round of stories on how we might mad science ourselves out of existence. Because a French scientist and his loyal supercomputer have worked out a way to punch a laser right through reality. Seriously.

In 1942, physicists looking at potential designs for nuclear weapons actually did consider the possibility that igniting a sufficiently powerful atomic bomb might “set the air on fire” in the sense that it might trigger a cascade of reactions in which the entire atmosphere simply became part of the explosion. However, as this Scientific American interview with one of the leaders of the Manhattan Project details, well before anyone had started building an actual weapon, a quick look at the numbers showed this was “incredibly unlikely.” And after some intense work by a calculator—which in this case means a human being tasked to do the work of number crunching—that estimate was moved to “incredibly impossible” years in advance of any actual test. So none of the big name scientists were really cringing on the day of the first nuclear test, wondering if they were going to set the world aflame. Though apparently Enrico Fermi did joke about it—a joke some people still haven’t found humorous after 74 years.

(snip)
This discovery may also have profound implications for experiments in nuclear fusion. Because this sounds exactly like the sort of “pump” that can get the necessary power into a hydrogen-nuclei before it has the chance to get out of the way. These plasma mirrors may be a standard feature of future power plants.

[saidsimplesimon]

1. Hope it's never pointed at US

Sounds like a Twilight Zone episode where the machine intended for research becomes a weapon of war and destruction. Ah, we live in interesting times.

[Calculating]

2. Do you want DOOM?

Because this sort of stuff is what leads to it in the video games.

[qazplm135]

3. Do you want ants?

Because this is how you get ants.

(Giant, mutated, extradimensional ants).

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

6. .

[Duppers]

4. Wow! Thank You!

Will show this to spouse.

[hunter]

5. Rails Across the Galaxy...

by Richard K. Lyon and Andrew J. Offutt

Three part serial, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August, September, mid-September 1982

It's about an interstellar civilization connected by a railroad of ultra-powerful laser beams powered by stars.

These laser rails carry so much concentrated energy they warp the familiar laws of physics allowing starship trains to travel along them.

When one of these laser beam railroads is shifted to create a new station within human reach the many aliens who ride the rails are in for a shocking and sometimes hilarious surprise.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1032861

[Bayard]

7. Sounds like my kind of movie!

[TlalocW]

8. Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

"We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me."

But now we may be able to laser them in the nads!

TlalocW

[Bayard]

9. Because.....

We're smart enough, we're strong enough, and doggonit--they deserve it!