A North Carolina high school football game was canceled before halftime and the stands evacuated Friday night when a referee spotted a laser beam “pointed onto the field,” school officials said.

This historic feat was achieved during a two-day experiment conducted from April 26 to 27 by the DSEL, using the Tiandu-1 satellite.

The beam isn’t just powerful—it’s quite large. At its biggest, the laser pulse is one foot (0.3 meters) across and several feet long, according to the Michigan release.

Try to fathom the power of 1 million nuclear power plants.Now, imagine there is a way to pack the equivalent of that into the pulse of a laser beam—even if it’s only for one quadrillionth of a ...