Physicists are planning to create lasers powerful enough to tear space itself apart!

The Chinese Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF) is planning to build an extreme laser named Station of Extreme Light (SEL). This laser should fire pulses as strong as 100 petawatts in the very fabric of reality in 2023.

Lasers of different colors - Source: Wikimedia Commons

There is a laser laboratory in Shanghai, where physicists Ruxin Li and his colleagues break records with the most powerful laser pulses ever seen on this planet. At the heart of the SULF, there is a sapphire enhanced with titanium that is thanks to a complex lens system capable of producing laser pulses at the incredible intensity of 5.3 million billion watts, or 5.3 petawatts. These pulses are extremely intensive but very very short. Each lasts less than one billionth of a second. The laser in SULF are being constantly improved on and until the end of 2018, they would like to create pulses as powerful as 10 petawatts. If they manage to do that, the power output of such a pulse will be thousand times stronger than the output of all electrical grids in the world. But again, for a very short time.

Super laser! China reports major progress in high energy laser research - Source: New China TV YouTube Channel

10 petawatts may sound impressive enough but Li and his coworkers have much bigger ambitions. They are preparing to build the unique Station of Extreme Light that should be capable of producing pulses of up to 100 petawatts. It should begin to fire its laser in 2023. The physicists are even sure what could happen as it will produce temperatures and pressures we don’t see on Earth. One of the most impressive possible outcomes is that such intensive laser pulses could tear vacuum apart. If such a thing as tearing the vacuum apart happens it could be the application of the famous Einstein’s equation E=mc2. SEL could be potentially capable to create matter from an insane amount of energy. It is much harder than it sounds, but in essence, it should work. If SEL actually manages to rip vacuum apart it could change particle physics forever. Traditional particle accelerators could be, at least partially, replaced with quicker and cheaper laser accelerators.

The Chinese aren’t the only ones working on “ultimate” lasers. Russian scientists created a design for the Exawatt Center of Extreme Light Studies (XCELS) that should produce up to 180 petawatt pulses. American physicists at the University of Rochester are developing the Optical Parametric Amplifier Line (OPAL) that is capable of producing 75 petawatt pulses. And the Japanese are working on a laser with 30 petawatt pulses. But all seems to indicate that the winner will be China with its Station of Extreme Light.

Sources

• http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/physicists-are-planning-build-lasers-so-powerful-they-could-rip-apart-empty-space