more at link... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-Japan-just-fired-world-s-powerful-laser.html ... 'With heated competition in the world to improve the performance of lasers, our goal now is to increase our output to 10 petawatts,' said the institute's Junji Kawanaka, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the university To put that into context, according to Popular Science, a 50,000 watt laser successfully took down a drone just a mile away. That 50kW laser was 10 billion times less powerful that the one used in Japan. Up until today's announcement, the world has only ever witnessed a 1-pettawatt laser created by the University of Texas, Austin. Not only did the Japanese laser generate twice as much power, but the team says it also has 100 times as much energy as its Texas rival. The laser, liked to the Death Star laser in Star Wars, is currently mainly of scientific interest rather than having any real-world purpose. Details of the experiment have been published in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...red-world-s-powerful-laser.html#ixzz3hOunfOpe Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
If this was a US development the headline would read "Laser capable of communicating with distant galaxies"