Ruxin Li and his colleagues hope that they can make laser pulses that could rip apart empty space. Instead, electrons and positrons flicker in and out of existence over really, really short timescales due to quantum mechanical uncertainty. All of this happens really, really quickly and can’t be noticed. Scientists in Europe are hoping to switch on their 10 million-billion-watt laser known as Europe’s Extreme Light Infrastructure in the next few years. The Exawatt Center for Extreme Light Studies (XCELS) in Russia hope to have a 180 million-billion-watt laser and Japanese researchers are putting in proposals for a 30 million-billion-watt laser.

Source: Forbes January 28, 2018 13:18 UTC