America Builds World's Most Powerful Laser

The world's most powerful laser, which can simulate the energy force of a hydrogen bomb and the sun, has been built in the US.Built in California and measuring the size of a football pitch, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the culmination of more than 10 years of work, at a cost of nearly £2.5bn.Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are hoping a series of experiments will allow it eventually to mimic the heat and pressure found at the heart of the sun.NIF consists of 192 separate laser beams, each of which is programmed to travel 1,000ft in one-thousandth of a second to converge simultaneously on a target the size of a pencil eraser.The laser's power will be gradually turned up in a series of experiments over the next year, culminating at a power level in 2010 to achieve what scientists call "fusion ignition".