An accomplished engineer and physicist with significant experience in the aviation and aerospace industries, Mark Thek has served as the president of Esterline Power Systems in Los Angeles, California, for nearly three decades. Mark Thek studied physics and mathematics at Cornell University, where he worked at the Wilson Particle Accelerator on electron-positron collisions. He also studied the development of high-energy pulsed lasers. A laser is a concentrated beam of light. Since light travels in a straight path, it's possible to collect all the incident beams in a single spot and calculate the power per unit area. The value can be presented in Watts per chosen metric of the area. A typical example is watts per square centimeters. To further understand the properties of light and apply the knowledge to critical scientific and other applications, researchers have long been working on technologies that can concentrate a large amount of laser energy in a single spot. In 2004, a groundbreaking discovery in this area was accomplished by a group of researchers who demonstrated a pulsed laser technology that beats at 10 raised to the power of 22 Watts per centimeter squared. This was the highest level of artificial light intensity for over a decade. In 2021, however, a group of researchers at the Center for Relativistic Laser Science in South Korea beat the record with a new pulsed laser technology that delivered 10 raises to the power of 23 Watts per centimeter squared. According to Cosmomagazine.com, to understand what this means, a layman may imagine focusing all the light reaching our planet from the sun on a spot that is the size of a human red blood cell.

1. A Long-Standing Research Area in Laser Technology
Mark Thek

2. Introduction
An accomplished engineer and physicist with significant experience in the aviation and
aerospace industries, Mark Thek has served as the president of Esterline Power Systems
in Los Angeles, California, for nearly three decades. Mark Thek studied physics and
mathematics at Cornell University, where he worked at the Wilson Particle Accelerator on
electron-positron collisions. He also studied the development of high-energy pulsed
lasers.

3. A laser is a concentrated beam of light. Since light travels in a straight path, it's possible
to collect all the incident beams in a single spot and calculate the power per unit area.
The value can be presented in Watts per chosen metric of the area. A typical example is
watts per square centimeters.

4. To further understand the properties of light and apply the knowledge to critical
scientific and other applications, researchers have long been working on technologies
that can concentrate a large amount of laser energy in a single spot. In 2004, a
groundbreaking discovery in this area was accomplished by a group of researchers who
demonstrated a pulsed laser technology that beats at 10 raised to the power of 22
Watts per centimeter squared.

5. This was the highest level of artificial light intensity for over a decade. In 2021, however,
a group of researchers at the Center for Relativistic Laser Science in South Korea beat
the record with a new pulsed laser technology that delivered 10 raises to the power of
23 Watts per centimeter squared. According to Cosmomagazine.com, to understand
what this means, a layman may imagine focusing all the light reaching our planet from
the sun on a spot that is the size of a human red blood cell.

6. According to experts, technology capable of delivering that intensity can advance
scientific understanding of how light interacts with charged particles. Scientists are
also looking to see such technologies bring about advancements in various fields,
including medicine (particularly cancer radiation treatment).