The ultimate final cause of the Na...

The ultimate final cause of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is to focus 192 laser beams, with an accuracy a fraction of the width of a human hair, forward a target the size of an aspirin.

This daunting challenge insinuates the degree of precision that was necessary to design and set up the $2.4 billion facility at the U Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. The NIF will perform fusion animal spirits experiments by compressing and heating fusion combustible matter capsules in order to exhibit thermonuclear ignitions with a peak power of 500 trillion W