Million Degree Laser Could Usher in Age of Fusion Energy

 

Two-million degrees Fahrenheit

That is temperature produced by a new laser beam, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator

The department, which on Wednesday announced the successful experiment of the fastest and purest x-ray laser pulses ever achieved, said the laser could achieve temperatures as hot as 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit — hotter than the sun’s corona. Scientists say the laser beam is billion times brighter that any other man-made X-ray source, making it the brightest entity ever created.

Black Holes True Power

 — Following a study of what is in effect a miniature galaxy buried inside a normal-sized one -- like a Russian doll -- astronomers using a CSIRO telescope have concluded that massive black holes are more powerful than we thought.

An international team of astronomers led by Dr Manfred Pakull at the University of Strasbourg in France has discovered a 'microquasar' -- a small black hole, weighing only as much as a star, that shoots jets of radio-emitting particles into space.

Called S26, the black hole sits inside a regular galaxy called NGC 7793, which is 13M light-years away in the Southern constellation of Sculptor.