Scientists in California fired up 192 laser beams simultaneously onto a single, tiny, two-millimeter target, producing and unbelievable 500 trillion watts of energy. To put it into context, that’s about 1,000 times more power than the entire United States uses at any given time. Scientists aren’t just firing off super-powerful lasers for fun, though; the team at the National Ignition Facility ultimately hope that by aiming the 10-story laser at a compressed pellet of hydrogen they’ll be able to kickstart a nuclear fusion reaction and produce an unlimited supply of clean energy.

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Post tags: "clean energy", fusion, fusion energy, fusion ignition, lasers, lawrence livermore national laboratory, national ignition facility, NIF, nuclear fusion, renewable energy, world's largest laser

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory just fired up the world’s largest laser to shoot a record-breaking 2.03 megajoule beam of light at a tiny frozen fuel pellet. The event marks a milestone in the continuing effort to create fusion power, which is hailed as the holy grail of unlimited clean energy.

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Scientists at the United State’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) are currently working on unlocking the key to nuclear fusion power by zapping atoms with giant lasers – and the project just got a major show of support from companies and laboratories the UK. The Rutherford Appleton Lab and the british company AWE have announced that they will join forces with the US to make this sustainable energy source a reality.

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Post tags: alternative energy, AWE, laser energy, laser nuclear fusion energy, lasers, national ignition facility, NIF, nuclear, nuclear energy, nuclear fusion, Rutherford Appleton Lab

This week California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that it fired up the world’s largest laser in a ‘dry run’ — a crucial first step towards the lab’s goal of creating nuclear fusion. During the process, 192 laser beams were converged in a 30-foot-in-diameter metal sphere where they delivered a 1 megajoule blast to a hydrogen-filled pellet. Fusion power is the holy grail of energy production — though it has never been achieved, it has the potential to create incredible amounts of energy and could replace the need for oil and gas reserves.

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Post tags: 192 lasers, fussion energy, fussion power california, national ignition facility, nuclear fussion energy, star power, world's largest laser

According to scientists at a government lab in Livermore, CA, all we need to do in order to save our planet from its energy woes is create a star right here on Earth. It’s that simple! All joking aside, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are 100% serious and believe they’ve come up with a way to use the world’s largest laser (it’s about 3 football fields long) to trigger a nuclear reaction so powerful that it will make a star form right on the surface of the Earth. We’ve written about the laser itself before, but read on to learn more about how they intend create the mini-star and solve our power issues with near limitless energy.

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Post tags: "clean energy", clean power, green power, Laser, lawrence livermore national laboratory, limitless energy, national ignition facility, nuclear fusion, star power, world's largest laser

Laser enthusiasts everywhere, rejoice. California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory just unveiled its $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility, a 10 story building as wide as three football fields that contains the world’s largest laser. When it goes online the facility will focus 192 laser beams on a 2 millimeter ball of frozen hydrogen gas in an attempt to create nuclear fusion – the holy grail of clean energy. If the machine does succeed, it stands to monumentally alter our energy landscape — one cubic kilometer of sea water has the fusion energy equivalent of the entire planet’s oil reserves!

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Post tags: clean tech, green design, lawrence livermore national laboratory, national ignition facility, nuclear fusion, renewable energy, sustainable design, world's largest laser