How we will actually lose California?.

[Tev]

They are going to try and shoot a laser at some stuff and make a baby star form!

Livermore, California (CNN) -- Scientists at a government lab here are trying to use the world's largest laser -- it's the size of three football fields -- to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's formula for cooking up a sun on the ground may sound like it's stolen from the plot of an "Austin Powers" movie. But it's no Hollywood fantasy: The ambitious experiment will be tried for real, and for the first time, late this summer.
If they're successful, the scientists hope to solve the global energy crisis by harnessing the energy generated by the mini-star.

Sounds like fun, no? Reading on you will find that it is actually going to be a very tiny and short lived bit of star....if it even works at all.

But anyway, I always assumed that California would fall off the side of the county into the sea......or collapse into anarchy and become some post-apocalyptic land that Hollywood is fond of showing us. What do you think about our giant "star-smasher" laser?

[Premmy]

Sounds familiar...

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Man I saw this thread on the Escapist a few days ago and I swear the first 2 posts on that site were almost the same as here, being filled as they were with tidings of the imminent apocalypse and a reference to Spider Man 2 respectively.

I thought you were better than this NPF. *Shakes head dissapointedly.*

[stabbity death]

We already have a gigantic nuclear fireball in the sky, and it gives us thousands of times more energy--for free--than we require to run everything we have.

This is time and money better spent perfecting solar technology.

[Jagos]

..

Seriously?

A star on Earth? Aren't there more than a few complications with that?

[Loyal]

Damnit, Science.

[Tev]

Originally Posted by Jagos

A star on Earth? Aren't there more than a few complications with that?

Nah, it'll only be a tiny little star and will only last for like 200 trillionths of the second. The stated goal is to see if the can do it so that then they can turn their laser on the ocean and fuse salty hydrogen or something.

[Osterbaum]

I'm all for alternative sources of energy, but we sort of have plenty of those already.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Erm guys, this is to try and see if fusion power is, you know, possible and viable. It's a good thing.

[Premmy]

Not really, Solar=Better less stupid, less done just to flashily show off the 'Miracle Cure" for energy problems.