Scientists seeking to bring the fusion that powers the sun and stars to Earth must deal with sawtooth instabilities—up-and-down swings in the central pressure and temperature of the plasma that fuels fusion reactions, similar ...
Plasma Physics
Mar 31, 2020
4
878
An international team of scientists led by a graduate student at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has demonstrated the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the same computing ...
Plasma Physics
Mar 17, 2020
0
117
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
A major issue with operating ring-shaped fusion facilities known as tokamaks is keeping the plasma that fuels fusion reactions free of impurities that could reduce the efficiency of the reactions. Now, scientists at the U.S. ...
Plasma Physics
Dec 23, 2019
33
957
Nuclear physics usually involves high energies, as illustrated by experiments to master controlled nuclear fusion. One of the problems is how to overcome the strong electrical repulsion between atomic nuclei which requires ...
Plasma Physics
Dec 5, 2019
2
237
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
9
1246
Have you ever wondered how the Sun creates the energy that we get from it every day and how the other elements beside hydrogen have formed in our universe? Perhaps you know that this is due to fusion reactions where four ...
General Physics
Oct 22, 2019
1
27
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
0
9
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
0
10
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
1
86
