When the petawatt laser is turned on, it has the power output of more than 2,000 times the output of all power plants in the United States.

A petawatt is one quadrillion watts. The laser is brighter than sunlight on the surface of the sun, but it only lasts for an instant, a 10th of a trillionth of a second (0.0000000000001 second).

The Texas Petawatt is the only operating petawatt laser in the United States; located at The University of Texas, in Austin. On Monday, March 31, 2008, the Texas Petawatt laser reached greater than one petawatt of laser power, making it the highest powered laser in the world.