Saturday Morning Physics: Alec Thomas - The Light Fantastic

The Light Fantastic Alec Thomas – Professor (U-M NERS and U-M Physics) Since the invention of Chirped Pulse Amplification (Strickland and Mourou, Physics Nobel 2018), lasers have become increasingly powerful by squeezing energy into inconceivably short pulses. The pulses of intense light produced by these lasers, such as the new ZEUS facility being constructed at U-M, can generate precision beams of high energy particles for new technologies, produce the conditions of extreme astrophysical environments in the laboratory and create matter from (almost) nothing.