A revolutionary new laser under development at DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could drastically reduce casualties by U.S. forces.
The Solid State Heat Capacity Laser program has already successfully achieved world-record energy output.
The system will eventually allow infantry units to use a beam of invisible light to destroy incoming mortars, artillery shells and anti-tank missiles, as well as defusing buried landmines.
The Army's Space and Missile Defense Command is sponsoring the program, which uses a unique pulsed beam that fires 200 times per second, and can already easily burn a hole through an inch of carbon steel in approximately seven seconds.
Related link: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Source: DOE Pulse
Related stories:
The Lightness of Electrons in a Twisting Metal Crystal
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers at Princeton University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center has observed electrons moving through a crystal of bismuth metal behaving like light.
IU Physicists to get their 'glue-on'
Indiana University physicists, with the backing of a National Science Foundation grant of $750,000, are preparing to study the strongest glue in the universe -- a glue so strong that it has held together the fundamental building blocks of matter since mere microseconds after the Big Bang.
New technique measures ultrashort laser pulses at focus
Lasers that emit ultrashort pulses of light are used for numerous applications including micromachining, microscopy, laser eye surgery, spectroscopy and controlling chemical reactions. But the quality of the results is limited by distortions caused by lenses and other optical components that are part of the experimental instrumentation.
T-REX is monster light source with multiple applications
When it comes to laser-based light sources, there are few brighter than T-REX, an LLNL project developed jointly by the NIF & Photon Science Principle Directorate and the Physical Sciences Directorate.
New technique takes a big step in examination of small structures
A team led by a Purdue University researcher has achieved images of a virus in detail two times greater than had previously been achieved. Wen Jiang, an assistant professor of biological sciences at Purdue, led a research team that used the emerging technique of single-particle electron cryomicroscopy to capture a three-dimensional image of a virus at a resolution of 4.5 angstroms.
Racing Ahead at the Speed of Light
Imagine trying to catch up to something moving close to the speed of light - the fastest anything can move - and sending ahead information in time to make mid-path flight corrections. Impossible? Not quite. Physicists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a particle accelerator at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, have achieved this tricky task - and the results may save the Lab money and time in their quest to understand the inner workings of the early universe.
Researchers develop technology for early detection of viruses
Iowa State University researchers have developed a technology that detects a single molecule of the virus associated with cervical cancer in women.
Unprecedented global measurement network achieves full coverage of oceans
An array of instruments, many built at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, that allows scientists to observe the basic physical state of all world oceans simultaneously is approaching its coverage goal after eight years of deployments.
