The largest laser beam in the world at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will shoot tremendous bursts of energy at an area the size of a pencil eraser. The goal? To recreate fusion -- which powers the sun -- to harnes a new source of clean energy for the 21st century.

The lasers are used to create the high heat and pressure needed for fusion. At the center of the project is a gold cylinder the size of a dime. This gold cylinder houses a capsule containing the hydrogen isotopes – the fuel for the fusion reaction. NIF scientists will blast the cylinder with 192 laser beams simultaneously (containing a total of 1.8 million joules of energy, about 500 trillion watts) for a few billionths of a second. The cylinder will produce x-rays that compress and heat the capsule resulting in a nuclear fusion reaction.

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