Beryllium, a hard, silvery metal long used in X-ray machines and spacecraft, is finding a new role in the quest to bring the power that drives the sun and stars to Earth. Beryllium is one of the two main materials used for ...
Plasma Physics
Jul 2, 2019
4
6
When you peer into the night sky, much of what you see is plasma, a soupy amalgam of ultra-hot atomic particles. Studying plasma in the stars and various forms in outer space requires a telescope, but scientists can recreate ...
Plasma Physics
May 31, 2019
55
3989
Scientists have found a novel way to prevent pesky magnetic bubbles in plasma from interfering with fusion reactions—delivering a potential way to improve the performance of fusion energy devices. And it comes from managing ...
Plasma Physics
Aug 4, 2020
10
4350
Lithium, the light silvery metal used in everything from pharmaceutical applications to batteries that power your smart phone or electric car, could also help harness on Earth the fusion energy that lights the sun and stars. ...
Plasma Physics
May 2, 2019
47
753
Scientists have found that adding a common household cleaning agent—the mineral boron contained in such cleaners as borax—can vastly improve the ability of some fusion energy devices to contain the heat required to produce ...
Plasma Physics
Jan 11, 2022
3
766
Among the intriguing issues in plasma physics are those surrounding X-ray pulsars—collapsed stars that orbit around a cosmic companion and beam light at regular intervals, like lighthouses in the sky. Physicists want to ...
Plasma Physics
Jul 29, 2016
35
2087
A key hurdle facing fusion devices called stellarators—twisty facilities that seek to harness on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars—has been their limited ability to maintain the heat and performance ...
Plasma Physics
Feb 25, 2020
4
718
Can tokamak fusion facilities, the most widely used devices for harvesting on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars, be developed more quickly to produce safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy for generating ...
Plasma Physics
Mar 19, 2019
37
442
The growing interest in deep-space exploration has sparked the need for powerful long-lived rocket systems to drive spacecraft through the cosmos. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics ...
Plasma Physics
Dec 22, 2021
0
817
Scientists who use magnetic fields to bottle up and control on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars must correct any errors in the shape of the fields that contain the reactions. Such errors produce deviations ...
Plasma Physics
Aug 6, 2019
26
609
