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MILAN (Reuters) — Italian energy company Eni will conduct research with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and invest in a company created by former MIT scientists to produce energy from nuclear fusion.

FILE PHOTO: Eni’s logo is seen in front of its headquarters in San Donato Milanese, near Milan, Italy, April 27, 2016. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File Photo.

Carbon-free fusion power could be ‘on the grid in 15 years’

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent.

When you’re trying to figure out what alien life might look like, it makes sense to be looking in the most extreme environments Earth has available.

One such place where life has been found to thrive is three kilometres (1.86 miles) beneath the ground, the home of one of the strangest lifeforms we know: the bacterium Desulforudis audaxviator.

It lives in complete dark, in groundwater up to 60 degrees Celsius (140 Fahrenheit) — an environment devoid of sunlight, oxygen or organic compounds.

Continue reading “This Strange Species That Lives Off Nuclear Energy Is Like Alien Life on Earth” »

Scientists at Amherst College and Aalto University have created, for the first time a three-dimensional skyrmion in a quantum gas. The skyrmion was predicted theoretically over 40 years ago, but only now has it been observed experimentally.

In an extremely sparse and cold quantum gas, the physicists have created knots made of the magnetic moments, or spins, of the constituent atoms. The knots exhibit many of the characteristics of ball lightning, which some scientists believe to consist of tangled streams of electric currents. The persistence of such knots could be the reason why ball lightning, a ball of plasma, lives for a surprisingly long time in comparison to a lightning strike. The new results could inspire new ways of keeping plasma intact in a stable ball in fusion reactors.

‘It is remarkable that we could create the synthetic electromagnetic knot, that is, quantum ball lightning, essentially with just two counter-circulating electric currents. Thus, it may be possible that a natural ball lighting could arise in a normal lightning strike,’ says Dr Mikko Möttönen, leader of the theoretical effort at Aalto University.

Continue reading “Scientists observe a new quantum particle with properties of ball lightning” »

Scientists create ‘quantum ball lightning’ in the lab in breakthrough that could pave the way for stable fusion reactors…

In the new research, led by scientists at Amherst College and Aalto University, the team created a three-dimensional skyrmion in an extremely cold quantum gas.

Continue reading “Scientists create ‘quantum ball lightning’ for the first time” »

Jupiter is a giant hot gaseous planet situated after the asteroid belt at a distance of 365 million miles when it is the closest w.r.t Earth and 601 million miles when it is the farthest. It was just a few years back when Jupiter’s moon Europa was reported as a potential planet that can hose life. Europa headlined on the internet in 2016 after scientists were able to see water vapor like plumes erupting from its crust. But, as a part of new research at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Europa might have liquid water flowing beneath its 10-kilometer deep ice crust. The researchers used data extracted the data from an analogous location on Earth and found that life is sustainable in even the harsh environment that Europa offers as it has a huge liquid ocean under its crust.

Douglas Galante is the part of the research team that stretched towards the Mponeng Gold Mine in Johannesburg, South Africa in such as evidence. During the research, they found that bacterium Candidatus Desulforudis Audaxviator survives inside the mine at the depth of 2.8 km without any sunlight. It uses the method of water radiolysis where the water molecules are dissociated with the help of ionizing radiation. The analysis of the mine highlighted the cracks that run throughout the mine filled with cracks that supply water containing radioactive uranium which in turns, helps the bacterium to break down water molecules and consume the free radicals produced.

Once the free radicals are generated, these subatomic molecules attack rocks in the surrounding which produces sulfate. This is what these bacteria utilize to synthesize energy and store it without even interacting with the sunlight. One of a kind findings confirmed that it was the very first time when scientists were able to explore a living organism using nuclear energy to survive directly. Galante stated that this ecosystem is analogous to that of Europa’s ocean which has a great amount of thermal energy and absolute zero temperature.

Continue reading “Europa may have hidden liquid ocean to sustain life, new study reveals” »

Nuclear physicists are using the nation’s most powerful supercomputer, Titan, at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility to study particle interactions important to energy production in the sun and stars and to propel the search for new physics discoveries.

TAE Technologies, Inc. (formerly Tri Alpha Energy), the world’s largest and most advanced private fusion company, has announced that its proprietary beam-driven field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasma generator, “Norman,” surpassed a new technical milestone, bringing the company closer to the reality of commercial fusion power. This latest achievement marks a significant step in the company’s mission to create a global energy revolution with clean, safe, sustainable fusion energy.

Norman, the $100MM National Laboratory-scale device named for company founder Dr. Norman Rostoker, was unveiled in May 2017 and quickly reached first plasma in June 2017. After over 4,000 experiments to date, Norman has now exceeded the capabilities and performance of the company’s previous FRC plasma generator, C-2U, and sets a new company record for plasma temperature.

Continue reading “TAE Technologies Gen 5 reactor targets tripling confinement with 10 times the power by 2020” »

TAE Technologies, the California-based fusion company backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, said its latest and greatest plasma generator has exceeded the headline-grabbing performance of its previous machine.

“This announcement is an important milestone on our quest to deliver world-changing, clean fusion energy to help combat climate change and improve the quality of life for people globally,” Michl Binderbauer, the company’s president and chief technology officer, said in a news release. “This achievement further validates the robustness of TAE’s underlying science and unique pathway.”

Continue reading “TAE Technologies pushes plasma machine to a new high on the nuclear fusion frontier” »