Êtes-vous prêts ? Signal envoyé ! Dans la salle de contrôle d'un centre de recherche en Roumanie, Antonia Toma, directrice de tir, active le laser le plus puissant au monde, offrant des promesses révolutionnaires, de la santé à l'espace.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Are you ready?
00:01 Signal sent.
00:02 In the control room of a research center in Romania,
00:06 Antonia Thomas, director of the fire department,
00:08 activates the most powerful laser in the world,
00:10 offering revolutionary promises, from health to space.
00:13 The numbers give the vertigo,
00:16 the system is able to reach a peak of 10 petawatts,
00:18 10 power 15 watts,
00:20 for a very short time,
00:22 of the order of the phantosecond,
00:23 a millionth of a billionth of a second.
00:25 In front of a screen wall displaying luminous beams,
00:29 the engineer of 29 checks a series of indicators
00:31 before launching the countdown.
00:33 The rate of these shots made on targets
00:36 in experimental rooms is currently very high,
00:39 30 to 40 shots per day.
00:41 A stressful but also very rewarding job,
00:44 in view of the teams of researchers
00:46 who come from all over the world to test this unique equipment,
00:48 she tells the AFP,
00:50 on the occasion of a press visit organized this week
00:52 on this site of the surroundings of the capital Bucharest.
00:55 Technology jewels.
00:58 On the other side of the window,
00:59 long rows of red and black boxes
01:01 sheltered by laser chains.
01:03 Inside is a technological prowess,
01:05 crystals of sapphire of Titanki,
01:07 excited by the effect of an optical pump,
01:09 emit the beam, hundreds of mirrors of all sizes,
01:12 gold-coated diffraction networks.
01:14 It took several tens of millions of euros,
01:17 450 tons of equipment and a meticulous installation
01:20 to reach this exceptional level of performance,
01:23 details Frank Lebrech,
01:26 head of laser activities for the French group Thales Operant le Système.
01:29 Equipped with an anti-vibration slab,
01:31 the building, which required an investment of 320 million euros,
01:35 mainly funded by the EU,
01:37 is the pride of Romania.
01:39 Even if the construction of a gamma-ray production unit
01:42 has had problems and will only be completed in 2026.
01:45 A huge step.
01:47 By scouring the huge room on the white immaculate ground,
01:50 Gérard Mourou, Nobel Prize 2018 in Physics,
01:54 can be very moved by this incredible odyssey
01:56 of the United States where he spent 30 years
01:58 in the realization in Europe of this project,
02:00 born in the 2000s within the European infrastructure
02:03 ELI, Extreme Light Infrastructure.
02:05 "We start from a small luminous seed with very, very little energy,
02:09 which will be amplified millions and millions of times",
02:12 he explains, the era of a child amazed despite his 79 years
02:15 and his white hair in front of the huge Franchi Bellé,
02:18 the phenomenal power reached.
02:20 This technique called CPA,
02:23 he developed it with the Canadian researcher Donna Strickland
02:26 and Nobel laureate, then his student, in the mid-1980s.
02:31 It consists of stretching the laser impulse,
02:33 amplifying it and then compressing it.