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
In Hollywood blockbusters, explosions are often among the stars of the show. In space, explosions of actual stars are a focus for scientists who hope to better understand their births, lives, and deaths and how they interact ...
Astronomy
Mar 16, 2015
3
2020
Since its detection in 2014, the brown dwarf known as WISE 0855 has fascinated astronomers. Only 7.2 light-years from Earth, it is the coldest known object outside of our solar system and is just barely visible at infrared ...
Astronomy
Jul 6, 2016
8
1975
How would you like to replace your water heater with a nuclear reactor? That's what Joseph Zawodny, a senior scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, hopes to help bring about. It would tap the enormous power of the atom ...
General Physics
Feb 19, 2013
133
4
Most energy-producing technologies used today are unsustainable, as they cause significant damage to our planet's natural environment. In recent years, scientists worldwide have thus been trying to devise alternative energy ...
US scientists responsible for a historic nuclear fusion breakthrough say they have repeated the feat—this time achieving a greater yield of energy.
General Physics
Aug 7, 2023
1
186
Russia and Italy have entered into an agreement to build a new fusion reactor outside Moscow that could become the first such reactor to achieve ignition, the point where a fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining instead ...
General Physics
May 10, 2010
22
0
A key challenge to capturing and controlling fusion energy on Earth is maintaining the stability of plasma—the electrically charged gas that fuels fusion reactions—and keeping it millions of degrees hot to launch and ...
Plasma Physics
Apr 28, 2020
10
1547
A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in South Korea working with two colleagues from Princeton University and one from Columbia University has achieved a new milestone in the development of fusion as ...
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
