One way to improve a fusion reaction: Use weaknesses as strengths
In the Japanese art of Kintsugi, an artist takes the broken shards of a bowl and fuses them back together with gold to make a final product more beautiful than the original.
In the Japanese art of Kintsugi, an artist takes the broken shards of a bowl and fuses them back together with gold to make a final product more beautiful than the original.
Condensed Matter
Mar 5, 2024
1
31
Most people know about solids, liquids, and gases as the main three states of matter, but a fourth state of matter exists as well. Plasma—also known as ionized gas—is the most abundant, observable form of matter in our ...
Plasma Physics
Mar 4, 2024
0
63
An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) successfully conducted in-situ studies with a plasma generated inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM). This marks the first time live SEM ...
Plasma Physics
Feb 28, 2024
0
46
Most of the energy from the sun and other stars comes from a chain of nuclear fusion reactions. The end of this chain is marked by the fusion of protons with beryllium-7 to form boron-8. This process is key in determining ...
General Physics
Feb 26, 2024
3
367
In the blink of an eye, the unruly, superheated plasma that drives a fusion reaction can lose its stability and escape the strong magnetic fields confining it within the donut-shaped fusion reactor. These getaways frequently ...
Plasma Physics
Feb 21, 2024
0
97
Five independent teams of researchers have reviewed the work and claims made by a group at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) who announced in December 2022 that they had achieved the first laser-powered fusion reaction ...
Artificially intelligent software has been developed to enhance medical treatments that use jets of electrified gas known as plasma. The computer code predicts the chemicals emitted by plasma devices, which can be used to ...
Plasma Physics
Feb 6, 2024
0
5
Scientists from the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) led experiments to demonstrate an effective "spark plug" for direct-drive methods of inertial confinement fusion (ICF). In two studies published ...
Plasma Physics
Feb 5, 2024
3
232
Fusion energy is being developed as a solution to global energy problems. In particular, the magnetic confinement method, in which ultra-high temperature plasma is confined by a magnetic field, is the most advanced and is ...
Plasma Physics
Jan 26, 2024
0
73
Plasma is an ionized gas—that is, a gas containing electrons, ions, atoms, molecules, radicals, and photons. It is often called the fourth state of matter, and surprisingly, it permeates everything. Plasmas, which are artificially ...
Plasma Physics
Jan 24, 2024
1
96