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Laser creates brightest light on Earth By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 3:01pm BST 08/04/2008 The brightest light on Earth now shines in a laboratory in Texas, one which will enable scientists to create a tabletop star. The $14m Texas Petawatt laser reached greater than one petawatt - one thousand million million watts - of laser power in the past few days, making it the highest powered laser in the world, says Prof Todd Ditmire, a physicist at The University of Texas at Austin. The laser in action in the lab, the blue glass amplifiers can also be seen...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A massive exploding faraway star—the brightest supernova astronomers have ever seen—has scientists wondering if a similar celestial fireworks show may light up the sky much closer to Earth sometime soon. The discovery, announced Monday by NASA, drew oohs and aahs for months from the handful of astronomers who peered through telescopes to see the fuzzy remnants of the spectacular explosion after it was first spotted last fall.

A star on the far side of our galaxy is 40 million times brighter, and 150 times more massive, than our Sun. Although the star appears to be the brightest yet detected, it cannot be seen with the unaided eye because it is shrouded in a huge gas and dust cloud. Astronomers at the University of Florida had to calculate its luminosity from its infrared radiation, which can penetrate the otherwise opaque cloud. Scientists say the size of LBV 1806-20 means it will live a very short life. Singular proof The Florida team says the superstar is at least as...