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An obstacle to generating fusion reactions inside facilities called tokamaks is that producing the current in plasma that helps create confining magnetic fields happens in pulses. Such pulses, generated by an electromagnet ...
Plasma Physics
Nov 18, 2019
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Scientists have long theorized that the energy stored in the atomic bonds of nitrogen could one day be a source of clean energy. But coaxing the nitrogen atoms into linking up has been a daunting task. Researchers at Drexel ...
Plasma Physics
Nov 14, 2019
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The Kincade Fire has been burning through Sonoma County, California, displacing people from their homes and leaving destruction in its wake. It is a stark reminder of the increasingly pressing need for a better understanding ...
General Physics
Nov 13, 2019
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Later this month a Texus rocket will launch from Esrange, Sweden, that will travel about 260 km upwards and fall back to Earth offering researchers six minutes of zero gravity. Their experiment? Burning metal powder to understand ...
General Physics
Nov 08, 2019
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Many of the most dramatic events in the solar system—the spectacle of the Northern Lights, the explosiveness of solar flares, and the destructive impact of geomagnetic storms that can disrupt communication and electrical ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 22, 2019
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Sandia National Laboratories physicists Mark Boslough and Dave Crawford predicted the Hubble Space Telescope would see a rising vapor plume as the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet crashed into the far side of Jupiter (Figure 1) in ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 21, 2019
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To create a practical fusion energy reactor, researchers need to control particles known as fast ions. These speedy ions, which are electrically charged hydrogen atoms, provide much of the self-heating ability of the reactor ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 21, 2019
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To understand the fundamental nature of our universe, scientists would like to build particle colliders that accelerate electrons and their antimatter counterparts (positrons) to extreme energies (up to tera electron volts, ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 21, 2019
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Researchers at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego have demonstrated a new approach for injecting microwaves into a fusion plasma that doubles the efficiency of a critical technique that could have major implications ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 21, 2019
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Grab a mixing bowl from your kitchen, throw in a handful of aluminum balls, apply some high voltage, and watch an elegant dance unfold where particles re-arrange themselves into a distinct "crystal" pattern. This curious ...
General Physics
Oct 21, 2019
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Magnetic reconnection, a process in which magnetic field lines tear and come back together, releasing large amounts of kinetic energy, occurs throughout the universe. The process gives rise to auroras, solar flares and geomagnetic ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 21, 2019
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Fusion combines light elements in the form of plasma—"the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei—"to generate massive amounts of energy. One of the ways that scientists help heat the ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 21, 2019
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Fusion is a non-carbon-based process for energy production, where lighter atoms fuse into heavier ones. Fusion reactors operate by confining a "soup" of charged particles, known as a plasma, within powerful magnetic fields. ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 21, 2019
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Assembly of the Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX) at Los Alamos National Laboratory is well underway with the installation of 18 of 36 plasma guns in an ambitious approach to achieving controlled nuclear fusion (Figure 1). The ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 21, 2019
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How do you start a fusion reaction, the process that lights the sun and stars, on Earth? Like lighting a match to start a fire, you first produce plasma, the state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei that ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 10, 2019
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A key requirement for future facilities that aim to capture and control on Earth the fusion energy that drives the sun and stars is accurate predictions of the pressure of the plasma—the hot, charged gas that fuels fusion ...
Plasma Physics
Sep 20, 2019
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For 400 years people have tracked sunspots, the dark patches that appear for weeks at a time on the sun's surface. They have observed but been unable to explain why the number of spots peaks every 11 years.
Plasma Physics
Sep 19, 2019
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Kinetic instabilities commonly arise from anisotropic (different properties in different directions) electron velocity distributions within ionospheric, cosmic and terrestrial plasmas. But only a handful of experiments have ...
Experimenting at 4.1 million degrees Fahrenheit, physicists at Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine have found that an astronomical model—used for 40 years to predict the sun's behavior as well as the life and death ...
Plasma Physics
Sep 10, 2019
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Ultra-low-loss metal films with high-quality single crystals are in demand as the perfect surface for nanophotonics and quantum information processing applications. Silver is by far the most preferred material due to low-loss ...
