California Scientists Are Building A Giant Laser - to Save the Earth
By Tyler LynchApril 29th, 2010, 9:40 amComments (23)
Have you read that Philip K. Dick novel where a team of scientists build a giant laser and concentrate its incredible firing power onto a single point the size of a bb, in order to create a mini-star with the capacity to save their planet from destruction?
If you said yes then you're lying because there is no such book. This outrageous scenario is happening right now—this moment—as a matter of fact, at a laboratory in southern California that is home to the world's largest laser. Pew! Pew! Fire ze lazahs! No—not that kind of laser. This laser seeks to create nuclear fusion and, in turn, invent a new energy source that will save the global energy crisis and, we reckon, enslave all humanity.
It's not that we fear the science—like some Flat Earth Society teabagger—we just fear it getting into the wrong hands (See: Death Star Destroys Alderaan). According to a project spokeswoman: "The worst possible mishap is, it doesn't work." Thanks. That's very reassuring—especially when considering the reaction in question is "the most fundamental energy source in nature." How is that not tempting to our military-industrial complex, or a team of evil Russians with a lab inside a volcano?
Commentarium (23 Comments)
haha pew! pew! this shit's kinda scary
It's a really big laser, in a really big building that is going nowhere and if it succeeds in making a little whiff of energy, we'll really all be pretty lucky.
IIRC the big laser is at Lawrence Livermore lab. That's not in Southern California, unless you like a six-hour commute each morning.
@ geebee: Yeah, sorry bout that. I live in New York so to me California is like this vast geographical oddity on the other side of the world.
I see, I sppouse that would have to be the case.
Now you say something