ELI lasers reach Schwinger limit

- The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) fired two ~10‑petawatt lasers together and observed light converting into electron‑positron pairs, demonstrating Schwinger‑limit effects in the lab. (x.com) - Researchers produced detectable electron‑positron pair showers using ~10 PW beams, showing that sufficiently intense light can spawn matter–antimatter at table‑top accelerator scales. (x.com) - The result opens prospects for compact particle sources and extreme‑field physics experiments, though practical applications require more reproducible runs. (x.com)