Crystal Laser

Crystal Cultivator

Russian-born physicist Natalia Zaitseva has an emerald-green thumb. Using her fast-growth method, a tiny seed crystal is planted in a 6-foot rotating tank of potassium dihydrogen phosphate solution. In just six weeks it matures into a gargantuan, 500-pound pyramid-shaped crystal. Raw crystals of that size traditionally take up to two years to grow. Zaitseva first developed her technique in Russia, but is now using it to help engineers build the world's largest laser at the US$1.2 million National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California.

The laser, made up of 192 beams, will be housed in a complex the length of two football fields and will be used to simulate the blast of a small-scale fusion bomb and create a pebble-sized sun as hot as the real thing. But completion of the project by its scheduled 2003 launch date would be impossible without Zaitseva's fast-growth method. Scientists will need more than 100 of her crystals, cut into 700 flawless slices - some measuring over a foot wide and a half-inch thick - to change the focus, direction, and wavelength of the laser beam.