Scientists will be firing up the most powerful laser in the US this week.
Called ZEUS (Zetawatt-Equivalent Ultrashort pulse laser System), the laser creates a very powerful yet ultra-short pulse of just about 25 femtoseconds. A femtosecond is a quadrillionth of a second. Simply put, a femtosecond is to a second what a second is to about 31.71 million years.
With its ramped-up capabilities, researchers could eventually use the laser to study some of the most exotic phenomena of the Universe at the laboratory scale, like the physics of a gamma-ray burst or a black hole. By the end of 2023, ZEUS should be running full-scale experiments in fields covering quantum physics, data security, materials science, remote sensing, and medical diagnostics like imaging.
Can you think of other applications for this very powerful laser? Please share your thoughts with us.