US laser capable of simulating sun’s energy force

AFTER more than a decade of work and $3.5 billion (e2.64bn), engineers have completed the world’s most powerful laser, capable of simulating the energy force of a hydrogen bomb and the sun itself.

The Energy Department was due to announce last night that it has officially certified the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, clearing the way for a series of experiments over the next year. Scientists hope the experiments eventually will mimic the heat and pressure found at the centre of the sun.

The facility, the size of a football field, consists of 192 separate laser beams, each travelling 1,000 feet in a one-thousandth of a second to converge simultaneously on a target the size of a pencil eraser.