The most powerful laser beam ever created has been recently fired at Osaka University in Japan, where the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiments (LFEX) has been boosted to produce a beam with a peak power of 2,000 trillion watts – two petawatts – for an incredibly short duration, approximately a trillionth of a second or one picosecond.
Engineers have tinkered with different reactor designs over the years, but an energy efficient fusion reactor remains elusive. Now, researchers are MIT claim that they’ve found a new material base for superconductors, enabling reactors to finally generate energy.
Last month, Boeing patented a nuclear fission-fusion jet propulsion engine; in the design, a laser heats a pellet of deuterium and tritium, starting a fusion reaction and releasing the hot gases produced in the process out of a nozzle to create thrust.