Archive for April 17th, 2008

Straight out of the University of Texas at Austin comes the world’s most powerful laser. I just assumed that most lasers were very powerful, but apparently the great state of Texas has the ideal one until someone else can come along and build an even more powerful laser or mounts this same laser to a […]

laser

Straight out of the University of Texas at Austin comes the world’s most powerful laser. I just assumed that most lasers were very powerful, but apparently the great say of Texas has the best one until someone else can come along and build an even more powerful laser or mounts this same laser to a shark’s head.

According to Gizmag.com,

“With greater than one quadrillion watts of laser power, the level of output reached on March 31 by the Texas Petawatt laser is equivalent to more than 2,000 times the output of all power plants in the United States and brighter than the Sun’s surface, according team leader and physicist at The University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Todd Ditmire.

The one quadrillion watt laser burst, which lasts just a 10th of a trillionth of a second (0.0000000000001 second) will be used to study the secrets of the universe by enabling examination of gases at extreme temperatures solids at pressures of many billions of atmospheres - even creating mini-supernovas and exploring energy made by controlled fusion.”

That sounds very nice. Maybe, though, we could use the beam for energy since it’s more than 2,000 times the output of all power plants in the United Says. I’m all for studying the universe, but maybe we could eradicate everyone’s home energy bills and then I’ll personally promise to donate half of what my bill used to be to this project. Everyone wins! Also, if you could make a laser that does the same for natural gas, my Comcast bill, the wife’s cell phone bill and automobile payment, and maybe even my rent somehow, that’d be really cool too.

The Texas Petawatt Project [University of Texas]

Via [crunchgear]

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Don’t lie — you thought they buried that PDA acronym years ago, didn’t you? Keeping the Personal Digital Assistant alive and well is Airis, which is readying its T482 GPS phone for release in France. The all black handset is set to be sold with or without navigation software and feature quad-band GSM support, GPRS / EDGE connectivity, a 416MHz Marvell PXA270 processor, 64MB of RAM, a 3.2-inch QVGA display, 2-megapixel camera and a microSD expansion slot. Furthermore, you’ll find a SiRFStar III GPS receiver, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11b/g WiFi, FM tuner and a rechargeable Li-ion, natch. Better get set to break open the piggy bank, as this one will demand €424 ($671) for French maps, €478 for coverage of Europe as a whole or €399 ($631) without pre-installed routing software.

[Via NaviGadget]

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OpenMoko’s first model, the Neo1973, has been sold out for some time now — a testament to the popularity of the open-source phone concept, yes, but also a big pain in the rear for new folks looking to get in on the action. That drought is thankfully about to end, though, with the introduction of the FreeRunner, a refreshed model that carries over the best parts of the Neo (think VGA touchscreen) while adding a few key features like three-axis motion detection and a faster processor. The group has just announced pricing on the latest model, and it comes in at a very consumer-friendly $399 — unlocked, naturally — which should grant a whole new group of hackers and Joe Regulars to join in the Linux free-for-all. Anyone needing ten or more will get an even better deal: $369, to be exact. It looks like the company’s studying production samples right now, and if all goes well, we’ll still see them in the pipe before the month’s out.

[Via PHONE Magazine]

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