Livermore, California (CNN) -- Scientists at a government lab here are trying to use the world's largest laser -- it's the size of three football fields -- to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's formula for cooking up a sun on the ground may sound like it's stolen from the plot of an "Austin Powers" movie. But it's no Hollywood fantasy: The ambitious experiment will be tried for real, and for the first time, late this summer.

"Most of our readers can identify with the problem of having too many devices that charge over USB and not enough USB outlets in the house. Or, a more common scenario might be traveling with your iPhone, Kindle, and perhaps soon an iPad, and then realizing that you brought the cables, but not the mini power brick. These are both scenarios that Fastmac hopes to address with its recently announced U-Socket that it displayed at the 2010 Macworld Expo, which the company hopes will eventually become ubiquitous at hotels, conference centers, and even your own home."

The concept of space-based solar power was introduced way back in 1968, but it’s only recently that the world has latched on to the idea. Japan is definitely getting in on the action with its latest spacey plan - a $21 billion solar-powered generator in the heavens to produce one gigawatt of energy, or enough to power 294,000 homes.