LIVERMORE, California – It may look like one of Michael Bay's Transformers, but this mass of machinery could soon be the birthplace of a baby star right here on Earth.

Using 192 separate lasers and a 400-foot-long series of amplifiers and filters, scientists at Lawrence Livermore's National Ignition Facility (NIF) hope to create a self-sustaining fusion reaction like the ones in the sun or the explosion of a nuclear bomb – only on a much smaller scale.

Sci-fi-inspired End of Days jokes may follow this historic undertaking like they did for CERN's Large Hadron Collider, but the science behind this advanced laser system is profoundly serious.

"Completion of the NIF construction project is a major milestone for the NIF team, for the nation and the world," said Edward Moses, the facility's principal associate director for NIF and photon science. "We are well on our way to achieving what we set out to do – controlled nuclear fusion and energy gain for the first time ever in a laboratory setting."

The hope is that this reaction will release more energy than the lasers put into the target isotopes and perhaps redefine the global energy crisis in the process.

Wired.com visited the National Ignition Facility just as the final lasers were coming on line. Read on for a virtual tour of one of the most sophisticated scientific facilities on the planet.

Here in the enormous target chamber, the 192 laser beams enter the blue, 33-foot-in-diameter vacuum chamber (the blue hemisphere in the top photo connected to the metallic arms) where they will collide with a target roughly the size of a peppercorn.

The beams start out in a different part of the facility as lower powered infrared light, similar to what's inside your DVD player. Next, the lasers pass through a complex series of amplifiers, filters and mirrors (much of which you'll see later on in the gallery) in order to become powerful and precise enough to create self-sustaining fusion.

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Smaller than a BB, the beryllium sphere containing the radioactive hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, will be bombarded with x-rays generated by the system's 192 lasers.

The trick to fusion is getting enough energy to fuse two nuclei together – in this case, the nuclei of hydrogen. Because the forces keeping the nuclei apart are so strong, the task requires extremely complex engineering and an insane amount of power.

For example, right before the beams enter the vacuum chamber which contains the target pebble pictured above, the lasers are converted to ultraviolet light by huge synthetic crystals. Once inside the chamber the beams enter a jellybean-sized reflective shell called a hohlraum (German for "hollow room") where the energy of the beams generates high power x-rays. Theoretically, the x-rays will be powerful enough to create enough heat and pressure to overcome the electromagnetic force that keeps the isotopes' nuclei separate, and the nuclei will fuse.

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Atop the target chamber pictured on the first page is a crane and airlock hatch for lowering equipment into the vacuum chamber.

If the experiment works it will be a precursor to the power plant of the future and improve scientists' understanding of the forces in our universe. In a time when conventional nuclear tests are banned, it could also provide valuable insight into the inner workings of nuclear weapons.

One laser beam feeds into the Precision Diagnostic System, which allows the laser to be sampled to make sure it is working properly before entering the target chamber.

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As seen from the laser bay overlook, NIF's Laser Bay 2 stretches over 400 feet into the distance where lasers are amplified and filtered on their way to the target chamber.

Three previous laser fusion systems have been built in the past 35 years at Livermore Lab, none of which produced enough energy to reach fusion. The first, Janus, went online in 1974. It created 10 joules of energy. The next experiment, in 1977, was a laser system known as Shiva, which achieved 10,000 joules.

Finally, in 1984, a project named Nova produced 30,000 joules, and it was the first time its creators actually believed there was a chance of fusion. This newest system by the NIF team is expected to create 1.8 million joules of ultraviolet energy, which scientists hypothesize will create a baby star in Livermore with positive power output.

NIF contains more than 3,000 chunks of neodymium-doped phosphate amplifier glass – basically a material that increases the power of the laser beams used in the fusion experiment when energized by giant flashlamps. These amplifier glass slabs are hidden away inside airtight enclosures throughout the laser bay (above).

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Technicians work on the beam tubes inside the laser bay that carry the lasers into the switchyard. From there they are redirected and aligned before entering the target chamber.

Throughout the entire NIF facility, emergency shutdown panels listing the status of the laser (using both text and light) provide a level of safety for the hapless scientist or technician who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time before a firing of the lasers.

Fiber optic strands (yellow cables and trough) feed low-powered laser light into the power amplifiers. There, they will be amplified by powerful strobes as they pass through synthetic neodymium-doped phosphate glass (the pink glass pictured on page 4).

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The power amplifiers hidden by the metallic covers on the ceiling contain the glass slabs which greatly increase the power of the laser. Just before the laser enters the amplifier glass, flashlamps pump energy into the glass, which is then picked up by the laser beam.

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Deformable mirrors hidden away above the silver covers on the ceiling are used to shape the beam's wavefront and compensate for any flaws before it enters the switchyard. Each mirror uses 39 actuators to change the shape of the mirror's surface and correct the beam. The wires you see here are used to control the mirror actuators.

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The Lower Preamplifiers amplify, shape and smooth the laser beams before sending them off to the main and power amplifiers.

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The power amplifiers and other components are transported and installed using a stand-alone, portable cleanroom, like the ones used to assemble microchips.

Each power amplifier is assembled in a nearby cleanroom and transported into place in the beam line by robot transporters, similar to those Wal-Mart uses to stock their wares.

A technician calibrates a power amplifier before it is placed into the beamline.

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The main control room looks similar to NASA's mission control for a reason: it was modeled after it. Instead of launching rockets into outer space, NIF will be attempting to bring the power of the stars – nuclear fusion – to Earth with lasers.

The control center for the beam source, known as the master oscillator room, looks similar to a server farm, but instead of computers, racks of laser equipment fill the room. Like the network your internet provider uses, the beams travel through optical fibers on their way to the power amplifiers.

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The NIF lasers start out in relatively small, low-powered and boring boxes (below and on the edge of the optic bench at right). The lasers are solid state and not much different than a standard laser pointer, albeit a different wavelength – infrared instead of visible.

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High-power flashlamps, like the one in your camera but super-sized, are used to excite the lasers. Each beam starts out about as strong as the one in your laser pointer, but all together they end up pumping out 500 terawatts for two-billionths of a second – roughly 500 times the entire peak power output of the United States.

This is possible because the lab's giant bank of capacitors stores up a reservoir of energy. The bank is also quite dangerous – while the capacitors are charged, the room that holds them is on lockdown due to the risk of high voltage arcing and potentially injuring any visitors.

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Like a scene out of Half-Life, the exterior of the NIF facility belies the history-making science conducted within.

Photos: Dave Bullock/Wired.com

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