Scientists have created a very powerful laser beam. This new laser beam is known as mother of all laser beams. It can focus power equal to all the sunlight heading earth's way. This laser beam can concentrate power up to twenty billion trillion watts per square centimeter. The laser contains three hundred terawatts of power. This power is equivalent to three hundred times the capacity of the entire US electricity grid. And this huge amount of power is concentrated in a 1.3 micron speck- about one hundredth the diameter of a human hair. But this beam cannot be sustained for a long time. This laser beam lasted for thirty femtoseconds. A femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second.
Such high power beams could help scientists develop better proton and electron beams for radiation treatment of cancer. This laser beam can produce this intense beam once every ten seconds whereas other powerful lasers can take an hour to recharge. This laser beam is produced by putting a moderate amount of energy into a very, very short time. In addition to medical use, intense laser beams like these could help researchers explore new frontiers of life. At even more extreme intensities, laser beams could potentially boil the vacuum, which scientists theorize would generate matter by merely focusing light into space.
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