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[IronyOwl]

That's the spirit!

Besides, if something this minor can screw up reality itself, we were bound to do it on accident sooner or later anyway. Best to just get it out of the way and say hello to the Rift Daemons right now.

[UltraValican]

That's the spirit!

Besides, if something this minor can screw up reality itself, we were bound to do it on accident sooner or later anyway. Best to just get it out of the way and say hello to the Rift Daemons right now.

Its a shame we couldnt wait till the velocirapture...

[Eagleon]

Not 200kJ, 200PW.

200PWh

Madness! It keeps changing! What could it mean?!

Sorry, I was mistaken, it's probably just 200PW - the s is generally left off. Thinking of 200PW as 'a lot' without thinking of time-frame is like leaving off the per-hour in MPH, only more acceptable because generally what you're assumed to be talking about is joules per second if you don't have it indicated. Wattage is a measure of joules per second. So 1 trillionth of a second of 200PW is equal to about 1000 joules? I don't know, my conversions might be off and I'm not great with math, but it's certainly not going to burn a hole through the planet or anything, let alone space-time itself.

[Il Palazzo]

So 1 trillionth of a second of 200PW is equal to about 1000 joules?

It's 1MJ actually.
Still, you should keep in mind that Wh is a non-standard unit of energy that'd require conversion of 1Wh=3600J, so you shouldn't really use it there.



Fun fact, ~400PJ is what you'd get from e.g. completely annihilating your cat. Assuming it'd take a whole second, then you'd have a 400PW cat. It could power two such lasers easily!

[Aqizzar]

Fun fact, ~400PJ is what you'd get from e.g. completely annihilating your cat. Assuming it'd take a whole second, then you'd have a 400PW cat. It could power two such lasers easily!

So what you're saying is, the laser will work fine, as soon as we invent a total mass-conversion reactor.  Sounds like a solid first step to me.

[Il Palazzo]

Oups, sorry, did I say two lasers? I meant two trillion lasers, just no more than two at a time.

[Osmosis Jones]

Fun fact, ~400PJ is what you'd get from e.g. completely annihilating your cat. Assuming it'd take a whole second, then you'd have a 400PW cat. It could power two such lasers easily!

So what you're saying is, the laser will work fine, as soon as we invent a total mass-conversion reactor.  Sounds like a solid first step to me.

A total mass conversion reactor... that runs on cats? So... if it ran out of control, we'd have a...


...Thermonuclear catsplosion?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 

[Eagleon]

Fun fact, ~400PJ is what you'd get from e.g. completely annihilating your cat. Assuming it'd take a whole second, then you'd have a 400PW cat. It could power two such lasers easily!

Your cat is two Tsar Bombas, just chilling out, making cute noises and scratching up your furniture every day. Just sitting around being a cat. Think about it, maaaaaaan.

[Leafsnail]

So what you're saying is, the laser will work fine, as soon as we invent a total mass-conversion reactor.  Sounds like a solid first step to me.

I dunno, are you not aware that there are already lasers that run at a higher power than the entire world's power output?  I mean this probably isn't gonna be that big a step up in terms of laser technology (the big thing seems to be "use a lot of these powerful lasers we already have").

[Il Palazzo]

To put this whole thing into more life-relevant context, the laser will have a nominal power of 200PW, but firing for 1/1000000000 of a second will use only 1MJ of energy, which in turn is roughly the amount that 60 horsepower engine delivers in half an hour. Or 1/2000 of what the Three Gorges Dam working at full capacity produces in one second.

As Eagleon said, the difficulty is in focusing that energy into a very tiny space and time frame.

Of course, saying that it's a Super Mighty Laser of Doom is better from the journalistic point of view.

Fun fact, ~400PJ is what you'd get from e.g. completely annihilating your cat. Assuming it'd take a whole second, then you'd have a 400PW cat. It could power two such lasers easily!

Your cat is two Tsar Bombas, just chilling out, making cute noises and scratching up your furniture every day. Just sitting around being a cat. Think about it, maaaaaaan.

Einstein taught us that each time we're taking a dump, we produce a potential few-megaton bomb.

ed: typo

[Heron TSG]

I dunno, are you not aware that there are already lasers that run at a higher power than the entire world's power output?  I mean this probably isn't gonna be that big a step up in terms of laser technology (the big thing seems to be "use a lot of these powerful lasers we already have").

Apparently each of the 10 lasers will be about thrice as powerful as the most powerful current laser.

[Aqizzar]

are you not aware that there are already lasers that run at a higher power than the entire world's power output?

Aw sweet, it's in Texas.  Bow down before your evanescent cowboy overlo

femtoseconds

Oh, nevermind.  They're just makin' crap up.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

femtoseconds

Oh, nevermind.  They're just makin' crap up.

About that.

[scriver]

C'mon, guys, this is how psuedoscientific fear-mongering gets started, re. LHC fiasco, with people actually trying to ban the thing.

I agree. Even though I'm scared shitless and yesterday lynched three local scientists (two geologists and a botanist) while screaming "I don't understand! I just don't understand!".

...But I think we should at least make sure the head guy really isn't an Old God cultist before we let him build anything. Preferably twice.

femtoseconds

Oh, nevermind.  They're just makin' crap up.

About that.

Oh come on. How am I possibly going to be able to believe a giant, universe-ripping laser  making use of something with the name Femto in it isn't at all supposed to summon up demonic forces? That's just too famn obvious.

[Jelle]

Hold on....isn't femto a measure of scale? 10^(-15) if I'm not mistaken. I is confused.