In the News – 2005

September 2, 2005
Laser Facility Faces Burning Questions Over Cost, Technology (Subscription required)
Nobody ever said recreating a thermonuclear explosion in a laboratory was going to be easy. But this year, the Department of Energy's (DOE) long-troubled National Ignition Facility (NIF) has suffered a series of political and fiscal blows that threaten to sink the stadium-sized laser. Says NIF project head Ed Moses: "We've been through this before, and we'll get through it again." (Science)

April 2005
First Experiment at National Ignition Facility Focuses on Hydrodynamics of Plasma Jets (Subscription required)
An experiment reported in the 11 March issue of Physical Review Letters highlights yet another, more purely academic role for NIF. The experiment, carried out last fall with the first four operational laser beams, is the first published physics result from the still-unfinished facility. The paper falls under the broad rubric of high-energy-density physics, a rapidly growing field of considerable interest to astrophysicists and materials scientists as well as designers of ICF schemes and weapons. (Physics Today)

May 30, 2005
Super-Laser Project Poses Challenges
Ed Moses talks of the "grand challenge" that has consumed him for the past five years, comparing it to trying to hit the strike zone with a baseball from 350 miles away or tossing a dime into a parking meter from 40 miles. "That's the precision we have to have," says Moses, the director of a high-energy physics adventure to produce the world's most powerful laser – one that scientists hope will create in a laboratory the energy found at the center of the sun. (Associated Press)