I’ve fired one of America’s most powerful lasers—here’s what a shot day looks like

This type of laser takes a tiny pulse of light, stretches it out so it doesn’t blast optics to pieces, and amplifies it until, for a brief instant, it carries more power than the entire US electrical grid. Then it compresses the pulse back to a trillionth of a second to create a star in a vacuum chamber.

On a typical shot day, the target might be a piece of metal foil thinner than a human hair, a jet of gas or a tiny plastic pellet—each designed to answer a different scientific question.

Scientists from across the country applied for time on TPW to study everything from the physics of stellar interiors and fusion energy to new approaches for cancer treatment.