Sun's fractal surprise could help fusion on Earth - space - 01 May 2014 - New Scientist

Sun's fractal surprise could help fusion on Earth - space - 01 May 2014 - New Scientist: STEREO revealed that when the movement of the wind's particles is perpendicular to the sun's magnetic field, they resemble a fluid, with sections that are smooth, interrupted by bursts of violence...

But when the particles move in parallel with the field lines, they behave very differently, with the turbulence evenly spread, like crinkly mountains that extend as far as the eye can see...

One problem with optimising their energy output is deducing what is going on inside them – inserting a probe isn't an option as it would melt...

By adding the fractal behaviour to their plasma models, fusion scientists may be able to control turbulence, which can cause plasma to escape the magnetic field containing it in the reactor...

Two-laser boron fusion lights the way to radiation-free energy : Nature News & Comment

Two-laser boron fusion lights the way to radiation-free energy : Nature News: One laser created a short-lived plasma, or highly ionized gas of boron nuclei, by heating boron atoms; the other laser generated a beam of protons that smashed into the boron nuclei, releasing slow-moving helium particles but no neutrons...

The boron plasma generated by the laser lasts only about one-billionth of a second, and so the pulse of protons, which lasts one-trillionth of a second, must be precisely synchronized to slam into the boron target. The proton beam is preceded by a beam of electrons, generated by the same laser, that pushes away electrons in the boron plasma, allowing the protons more of a chance to collide with the boron nuclei and initiate fusion.

Computer simulation shows the sun's "heartbeat" is magnetic

Computer simulation shows the sun's "heartbeat" is magnetic: They ran their simulation on University of Montreal supercomputers which are connected to a larger network across the city. In so doing, they observed that though the sun as a whole experiences an 11 year cycle of solar polar reversals (as noted here on Earth by the periodic nature of observable sun spot activity), zonal magnetic field bands undergo a polarity reversal on average every 40 years.

Rocket powered by nuclear fusion could send humans to Mars

Rocket powered by nuclear fusion could send humans to Mars: To power a rocket, the team has devised a system in which a powerful magnetic field causes large metal rings to implode around this plasma, compressing it to a fusion state. The converging rings merge to form a shell that ignites the fusion, but only for a few microseconds...
The UW-MSNW team has successfully demonstrated the metal-crushing process in the UW Plasma Dynamics Laboratory in Redmond. The team had a sample of the collapsed, fist-sized aluminum ring resulting from one of those tests on hand for people to see and touch at the recent NASA symposium.

Laser empties atoms from the inside out

Laser empties atoms from the inside out: ...it is possible to remove the two most deeply bound electrons from atoms, emptying the inner most quantum shell and leading to a distinctive plasma state...


"At such extraordinary intensities electrons move at close to the speed of light and as they move they create perhaps the most intense X-rays ever observed on Earth. These X-rays empty the atoms from the inside out..."


The analysis showed the mechanism for hollow atom generation was not due to the collision of electrons or driven by the laser photons, but was driven by the resulting radiation field from the interaction.

Physicists Find a Backdoor Way to Do Experiments on Exotic Gravitational Physics

Physicists Find a Backdoor Way to Do Experiments on Exotic Gravitational Physics: But what about running the dualities in the other direction, using laboratory measurements of extreme materials to probe exotic gravitational physics?...
The experiments in question entail smashing gold or lead nuclei together to create plasmas of quarks and gluons...
The plasmas must actually be liquid...

They equated the viscosity of a fluid to gravitational waves caroming off a black hole in higher-dimensional space—which, even for a physicist, is not an analogy that springs to mind...

The answer: 1/4π, in the appropriate units. The viscosity measured by RHIC comes close. Water, some 400 times more viscous, is molasses in comparison.

Surprisingly, the minimum value is the same for all fluids, whatever they are made of. Through the logic of duality, this universality has a simple explanation: Viscosity is equivalent to a gravitational phenomenon, and according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravitation is blind to compositional details.

Illinois Group’s Fusion Reactor Innovation Experiment Proves Successful in China

Illinois Group’s Fusion Reactor Innovation Experiment Proves Successful in China: Ruzic and his students in the Center for Plasma Material Interactions (CPMI) designed a method for molten lithium to self-circulate along the surface of a fusion reactor’s diverter, where excess heat is collected and removed. Such an innovation, Ruzic believes, could reduce the size of a fusion reactor’s radius by a third, while allowing it to produce the same volume of energy.

 “We’re looking at a factor of 10 in cost reductions, at least,” Ruzic said.

The concept, known as LiMIT (Lithium/Metal Infused Trenches), previously was successfully conducted in CPMI laboratories. Ruzic believes the success in China shows that LiMit works on an actual fusion device as well as in the laboratory.

A New Theory Of The Mysterious Origins Of Ball Lightning

A New Theory Of The Mysterious Origins Of Ball Lightning: ...the researchers propose that ball lightning isn’t the result of microwave radiation, antimatter, or slowly burning particles of silicon leftover form lightning strikes (all of which have been theorized as the source of the phenomenon), but of leftover ions that accumulating and interacting with electric fields, often across some kind of dividing plane like a pane of glass (explaining why eyewitness accounts have sometimes described these glowing orbs as passing through glass.
Essentially, the paper theorizes that streams of ions--electrically charged particles--leftover from normal lightning strikes or some other source like aircraft radars (which also explains why the phenomenon has been associated with flying aircraft) accumulate on some thin planar surface like a glass window, creating an electric field on the other side. This field excites air molecules around it an in extreme cases cause a ball discharge--which can dissipate harmlessly or burst with some (terrifying) force.

Magnetic space whirlpools give Mercury a plasma shower - New Scientist - New Scientist

Magnetic space whirlpools give Mercury a plasma shower : To the list of scary things in space you can now add giant magnetic vortices. Huge swirls at the edge of Mercury's magnetosphere – where the planet's magnetic field meets the energetic charged particles of the solar wind – help shower the planet in solar plasma...

A new study of Messenger's data suggests the waves are stronger than thought – two to three times the strength of their terrestrial counterparts – and occur 10 to 30 times more frequently too.

Physicists Crack Fusion Mystery - Technology Review

Physicists Crack Fusion Mystery - Technology Review: One reason it's taking decades to develop fusion reactors that can generate electricity is that physicists don't completely understand what's going on in the high-temperature plasma inside a reactor. Under certain conditions, the plasma—which is where fusion reactions take place—disappears in under a millisecond.

A new theory developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) explains what happens just before the plasma disappears...

According to the researchers' theory, islands develop within the plasma that cool off and cause the plasma to disappear. These islands—which are easily identified—could be selectively heated with microwaves, the researchers think, which could keep the plasma stable.

Fusion plasma research helps neurologists to hear above the noise

Fusion plasma research helps neurologists to hear above the noise:  MEG has great potential as a useful diagnostic tool - it is non-invasive and much more comfortable for the subject than other techniques - but the neuromagnetic signal varies fast, the signal to noise ratio is low meaning that such data are challenging to understand.

These challenges - extracting signal from noise in observations that can only be made from external sensors - are also often faced in magnetically confined plasmas for fusion. Fusion plasma researchers at the University of Warwick have developed methods to deal with data analysis problems similar to those faced by the neuroscientists. The Warwick researchers have now shared these methods and analytical techniques with their neuroscientific colleagues in Cambridge and Birkbeck. Together they have been able to carry out new studies that are already beginning to provide new insights into the brain's network - they have made the first map of the dynamically changing network of the brain as it deals with the 'surprise' of the different sounds.

Fire Burns Differently in Space, Space Station Experiment Shows | NASA & International Space Station Science | Fire & Microgravity Research | Space.com

Fire Burns Differently in Space, Space Station Experiment Shows: To study fires in space, FLEX researchers ignite a small drop of heptane or methanol fuel in a special experiment rack aboard the space station. As the droplet burns, a spherical flame engulfs it, and cameras record the whole process.

So far, researchers have observed some unexpected phenomena.

"Thus far, the most surprising thing we've observed is continued apparent burning of heptane droplets after flame extinction under certain conditions," Williams said. "Currently, this is entirely unexplained."

Simulating tomorrow's accelerators at near the speed of light

Simulating tomorrow's accelerators at near the speed of light: A team of researchers led by Jean-Luc Vay of Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator and Fusion Research Division (AFRD) has borrowed a page from Einstein to perfect a revolutionary new method for calculating what happens when a laser pulse plows through a plasma in an accelerator like BELLA. Using their “boosted-frame” method, Vay’s team has achieved full 3-D simulations of a BELLA stage in just a few hours of supercomputer time, calculations that would have been beyond the state of the art just two years ago...
The boosted-frame method, first proposed by Vay in 2007, exploits Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity to overcome difficulties posed by the huge range of space and time scales in many accelerator systems. Vast discrepancies of scale are what made simulating these systems too costly...
Vay’s team showed that using a particular boosted frame, that of the wakefield itself – in which the laser pulse is almost stationary – realizes near-optimal speedup of the calculation. And it fundamentally modifies the appearance of the laser in the plasma. In the laboratory frame the observer sees many oscillations of the electromagnetic field in the laser pulse; in the frame of the wake, the observer sees just a few at a time.

Physicists build bigger 'bottles' of antimatter to unlock nature's secrets

Physicists build bigger 'bottles' of antimatter to unlock nature's secrets: ...over the past few years, he added, researchers have developed new techniques to store billions of positrons for hours or more and cool them to low temperatures in order to slow their movements so they can be studied.
Surko said physicists are now able to slow positrons from radioactive sources to low energy and accumulate and store them for days in specially designed "bottles" that have magnetic and electric fields as walls rather than matter. They have also developed methods to cool them to temperatures as low as that of liquid helium and to compress them to high densities.
"One can then carefully push them out of the bottle in a thin stream, a beam, much like squeezing a tube of toothpaste," said Surko, adding that there are a variety of uses for such positrons.

Sun's magnetic building blocks revealed by SUNRISE

Sun's magnetic building blocks revealed by SUNRISE: "Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany have now for the first time uncovered and characterized the smallest building blocks of the Sun’s magnetic field. In these tiny regions of only a few hundred kilometres in diameter the strength of the magnetic field exceeds the Earth’s magnetic field strength by a factor of approximately 3,000."

Taming thermonuclear plasma with a snowflake

Taming thermonuclear plasma with a snowflake: "While the conventional magnetic X-point divertor concept has existed for three decades, a very recent theoretical idea and supporting calculations by Dr. D.D. Ryutov from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have indicated that a novel magnetic divertor -- the 'snowflake divertor' -- would have much improved heat handling characteristics for the plasma-material interface. The name is derived from the appearance of magnetic field lines forming this novel magnetic interface."

The many faces of the shear Alfven wave

The many faces of the shear Alfven wave: "It has become apparent that Alfvén waves are important in a wide variety of physical environments. They play a central role in the stability of the magnetic confinement devices used in fusion research, give rise to aurora formation in planets, and are thought to contribute to heating and ion acceleration in the solar corona. Shear waves can also cause particle acceleration over considerable distances in interstellar space."

Physicists produce black hole plasma in the lab

Physicists produce black hole plasma in the lab: It is precisely this process, the stripping of further electrons from highly charged ions by incident X-rays, which researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics have reproduced in the laboratory in collaboration with colleagues at BESSY II - the Berlin synchrotron X-ray source. The heart of the experiment was the EBIT electron beam ion trap designed at the Max-Planck institute. Inside the trap, iron atoms were heated up with the aid of an intense electron beam as they would be deep inside the sun or, as in this case, in the vicinity of a black hole.

Under such conditions, iron exists, for example, as the Fe14+ ion, ionised fourteen times as it were. The experiment proceeds as follows: A cloud of these ions, only a few centimetres long and thin as a hair, is kept suspended in an ultra-high vacuum with the help of magnetic and electric fields. X-rays from the synchrotron then impact on this cloud; the photon energy of the X-rays is selected by a "monochromator" with extreme precision and directed onto the ions as a thin, focused beam.

Findings show promise for nuclear fusion test reactors

Findings show promise for nuclear fusion test reactors: "A major challenge in finding the right coatings to line fusion reactors is that the material changes due to extreme conditions inside the reactors, where temperatures reach millions of degrees. The energy causes tiny micro- and nano-scale features to 'self-organize' on the surface of the lithiated graphite under normal plasma-surface interaction conditions. But the surface only continues this pumping action for a few seconds before being compromised by damage induced by the extreme internal conditions, so researchers are trying to improve the material durability, Allain said.
'The key is to understand how to exploit these self-organizing structures and patterns to provide the recycling and also to self-heal, or replenish the pumping conditions we started with,' he said."

Pop goes the plasma: extreme conditions inside imploding bubbles | Engineering at Illinois

Pop goes the plasma: extreme conditions inside imploding bubbles | Engineering at Illinois: "High-intensity ultrasound waves traveling through liquid leave bubbles in their wake. Under the right conditions, these bubbles implode spectacularly, emitting light and reaching very high temperatures, a phenomenon called sonoluminescence. Researchers have observed imploding bubble conditions so hot that the gas inside the bubbles ionizes into plasma, but quantifying the temperature and pressure properties has been elusive.

Plasma emission from collapsing bubbles: The imploding bubbles move around after each collapse, tracing out a lit path, like a person flinging their arm around while holding a flashlight.
In a paper published in the June 27 issue of Nature Physics, University of lllinois professor Kenneth S. Suslick and former student David Flannigan, now at the California Institute of Technology, experimentally determine the plasma electron density, temperature and extent of ionization."