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Researchers at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) have led experiments showcasing an efficient “spark plug” for direct-drive approaches to inertial confinement fusion (ICF). In a pair of studies featured in Nature Physics, the team shares their findings and details the potential for scaling up these methods, aiming for successful fusion in a future facility.

LLE is the largest university-based U.S. Department of Energy program and hosts the OMEGA laser system, which is the largest academic laser in the world but still almost one hundredth the energy of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. With OMEGA, Rochester scientists completed several successful attempts to fire 28 kilojoules of laser energy at small capsules filled with deuterium and tritium fuel, causing the capsules to implode and produce a plasma hot enough to initiate fusion reactions between the fuel nuclei. The experiments caused fusion reactions that produced more energy than the amount of energy in the central hot plasma.

The OMEGA experiments use direct laser illumination of the capsule and differ from the indirect drive approach used on the NIF. When using the indirect drive approach, the laser light is converted into X-rays that in turn drive the capsule implosion. The NIF used indirect drive to irradiate a capsule with X-rays using about 2,000 kilojoules of laser energy. This led to a 2022 breakthrough at NIF in achieving fusion ignition —a fusion reaction that creates a net gain of energy from the target.

The team behind the breakthrough used the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA) to zoom in on water vapor locked up in gas and dust within a protoplanetary disk surrounding the sun-like star HL Tauri, located 450 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Taurus.

“I had never imagined that we could capture an image of oceans of water vapor in the same region where a planet is likely forming,” Stefano Facchini research leader and an astronomer at the University of Milan, said in a statement. “Our results show how the presence of water may influence the development of a planetary system, just like it did some 4.5 billion years ago in our own solar system.”

A breakthrough in plasma control brings us a step closer to safe, limitless power.

Embark on a cosmic journey as we explore the latest breakthrough in black hole research. Recently, scientists revealed the discovery of the oldest black hole ever observed.

A sodium battery developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin significantly reduces fire risks from the technology, while also relying on inexpensive, abundant materials to serve as its building blocks.

Though battery fires are rare, increased battery usage means these incidents are on the rise.

Continue reading “Fire-resistant sodium battery balances safety, cost and performance” »

Wonderful work truly breakthrough for different types of compounds for chemistry. Year 2021.

V-SYNTHES, a scalable and computationally cost-effective synthon-based approach to compound screening, identified compounds with a high affinity for CB2 and CB1 in a hierarchical structure-based screen of more than 11 billion compounds.

Researchers can engineer cells to express new genes and produce specific proteins, giving the cells new parts to work with. But, it’s much harder to provide cells with instructions on how to organize and use those new parts. Now, new tools from University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers offer an innovative way around this problem.

Their research is published in the journal Cell.

Everything a cell does depends on how molecules are organized within the cell. Inside our cells—all cells—proteins and other molecules undergo organization and reorganization to carry out cellular function. Like a fleet of commuter trains moving at scheduled intervals along their different routes, proteins within a cell are organized in time and space to carry out complex but predictable functions.

Philosopher David Chalmers and neuroscientist Christof Koch made a bet in 1998 on a breakthrough in consciousness research within 25 years. Now the bet is settled – thanks to the journalist Per Snaprud, neuroscience editor at the Swedish popular science magazine Forskning \& Framsteg. Here’s a conversation that was held between the three at New York university on June 24:th 2023.

Researchers at Mainz University have been able to visualize the third class of magnetism, called altermagnetism, in action.

Ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism have long been known to scientists as two classes of magnetic order of materials. Back in 2019, researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) postulated a third class of magnetism, called altermagnetism. This altermagnetism has been the subject of heated debate among experts ever since, with some expressing doubts about its existence.

Recently, a team of experimental researchers led by Professor Hans-Joachim Elmers at JGU was able to measure for the first time at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) an effect that is considered to be a signature of altermagnetism, thus providing evidence for the existence of this third type of magnetism. The research results were published in Science Advances.