Well, sort of!
Ceri Brenner explained how in the latest Backstage Science video.
The mini-stars are actually tiny specks of plasma made by firing one of the world's most intense lasers, known as Vulcan.
Vulcan is a so-called petawatt laser.
It produces so much energy in such a short space of time I won't even bother writing all the big and small numbers... You can check out the official website for that stuff.
They do have one cool claim though... for 1 picosecond (0.000000000001 seconds) the laser beam is 10,000 times more powerful than Britain's National Grid.

The target (pictured) is stripped of its electrons and a strange plasma forms for the briefest of moments.
That's the mini star!
No comments:
Post a Comment