LHC Laser Will Tear Apart the Fabric of Space

The Large Hadron Collider didn't destroy Earth, so physicists are  having another go. A team is planning to build an enormously powerful laser that could rip apart the fabric of space.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra High-Field laser will be 200 times more powerful than the most powerful lasers that currently exist on the planet, says John Collider, a member of the team and the director of the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot. "At this kind of intensity we start to get into unexplored territory, as it is an area of physics that we have never been before," he  told the Telegraph.Environment Clean Generations

The aim is to boil a vacuum. Vacuums are normally thought of as empty space, but physicists believe they actually contain  tiny particles that pop in and out of existence, so fast that it's difficult to prove they exist. By focusing the ELI Ultra-High-Field laser on an area of space, the team believes that the fabric of the vacuum can be pulled apart, revealing these particles for the first time.

The laser will be made up of 10 beams, each providing 200 petawatts of power for less than a trillionth of a second. As 200 petawatts is more than 100,000 times the amount of power produced by the world, the energy will need to be stored up over time in huge capacitors. At the crucial moment, that energy will be released to form metre-wide laser beams that will then be combined and focused down onto a tiny point. At that point, the intensity of the light will be greater than at the centre of the Sun.

In these conditions, it's hoped that these pairs of matter-antimatter particles -- which normally annihilate each other almost as soon as they form -- will be pulled apart, leaving tiny electrical charges, which the team hope to measure. Environment Clean Generations.The research could yield some insight into why the Universe appears to contain far more matter than we've so far been able to detect.

 The location of the laser hasn't yet been decided, but the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory's Central Laser Facility is in the running. Three prototypes for the laser will be constructed in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, each costing £200 million and scheduled to become operational in 2015. If successful, the final laser will be built -- costing around £1 billion -- in either Britain, Russia, France, Hungary, Romania or the Czech Republic.

Wolfgang Sandner, coordinator of the Laserlab Europe network and president of the German Physics Society,  said: "There are many challenges to be over come before we can do that, but it is mainly a matter of scaling up the technology we have so we can produce the powers needed."

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The Future of Tractor Beams

The "tractor beam" approaches depend on precise shaping of the intensities of laser beams

US space agency Nasa has funded a study of "tractor beams" to gather samples for analysis in future missions.Environment Clean Generations

The $100,000 (£63,000) award will be used to examine three laser-based approaches to do what has until now been the stuff of science fiction.

Several tractor-beam ideas have been published in the scientific literature but none has yet been put to use.

Nasa scientist Paul Stysley says the approach could "enhance science goals and reduce mission risk".

"Though a mainstay in science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, laser-based trapping isn't fanciful or beyond current technological know-how," said Dr Stysley of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, whose group was awarded the research funding.

High-beam profile The team has identified three possible options to capture and gather up sample material either in future orbiting spacecraft or on planetary rovers.

One is an adaptation of a well-known effect called "optical tweezers" in which objects can be trapped in the focus of one or two laser beams. However, this version of the approach would require an atmosphere in which to operate.Environment Clean Generations

The other two methods rely on specially shaped laser beams - instead of a beam whose intensity peaks at its centre and tails off gradually, the team is investigating two alternatives: solenoid beams and Bessel beams.

The intensity peaks within a solenoid beam are found in a spiral around the line of the beam itself, while a Bessel beam's intensity rises and falls in peaks and troughs at higher distances from the beam's line.

Solenoid beams have already proven their "tractor beam" abilities in laboratory tests published in the journal Optics Express, but the pulling power of Bessel beams, presented on the preprint server Arxiv in February, remains to be proved experimentally.Environment Clean Generations

In all three cases, explained Dr Stysley, the effect is a small one - but it could in some instances outperform existing methods of sample gathering.

"[Current] techniques have proven to be largely successful, but they are limited by high costs and limited range and sample rate," he said. Environment Clean Generations

"An optical-trapping system, on the other hand, could grab desired molecules from the upper atmosphere on an orbiting spacecraft or trap them from the ground or lower atmosphere from a lander.

"In other words, they could continuously and remotely capture particles over a longer period of time, which would enhance science goals and reduce mission risk."

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Real Blue Eyes from Brown Eyes

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (KTLA) -- If you've always wanted blue eyes, but have brown instead, there might be something you can do to change that.

A doctor in Laguna Beach called Stroma Medical says it can use laser technology to change brown eyes to blue -- permanently -- without damaging vision.Environment Clean Generations

Dr. Gregg Homer has been working on the technology for 10 years.

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. (KTLA) -- If you've always wanted blue eyes, but have brown instead, there might be something you can do to change that.

A doctor in Laguna Beach called Stroma Medical says it can use laser technology to change brown eyes to blue -- permanently -- without damaging vision.Environment Clean Generations

Dr. Gregg Homer has been working on the technology for 10 years.

He still has another year of research to complete on the procedure.

Researchers believe the procedure will be available outside the United States in 18 months, and in the U.S. in three years.

It will cost about $5,000.Environment Clean Generations

Homer says thousands of people have already emailed him expressing interest.

"They eyes are the windows to the soul," he says.

"A blue eye is not opaque, you can see deeply into it, and a brown eye is very opaque. I think there is something very meaningful about this idea of having open windows to the soul."

by "environment clean generations"