It may look like a mid-70s prog rock and roll record album blanket , but this is actually an exemplification of the potential future of thermonuclear vim production in progress .
The image comes from theNational Ignition Facility , which open this week in California and propose to use lasers to turn tiny pellet of hydrogen into thermonuclear muscularity , as the UK Guardian paper explains :
Inside the construction , scientist will apply the world ’s most brawny laser to create 192 disjoined ray of light that will be directed at a beadwork of frozen hydrogen in a tearing salvo lasting five one-billionth of a second . Each fuel pellet value just two mm across but costs around $ 40,000 , because they must be dead spherical to see to it they collapse properly when the optical maser lightness strikes .
The vivid ray produce a brawny shockwave that crunches the fuel pellet at a million miles an minute , generating temperatures of around 100,000,000C. Under such extreme conditions , which are found only in the center of stars , the H atoms will fuse , producing He and immense amount of energy .
Do n’t expect a speedy result as to whether the hypothesis will hold up in practice ; the experiments – which are schedule to continue until 2040 – will not even give full intensity for another 12 months . But , considering that it ’s accept almost 15 years to get the facility built , I ’m assuming that everyone involved is already fine with the patience thing .
California fires up optical maser merger machine[Guardian.co.uk ]
Science
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