This giant laser can simulate a planet’s core

As astronomers search for life outside our solar system, they have to try and answer one big question: What’s the recipe for a habitable planet? We tend to think about the ingredients we encounter every day: liquid water, the protective blanket of the atmosphere, a sun that is neither too warm nor too hot. But there are other factors that are probably equally important: Earth’s cooled and hardened crust, its gooey molten guts, its magnetic field, its volcanoes and deep sea vents. These are the features that fostered life as we know it, and they were shaped by unseen processes hidden deep within the globe. Read more...