Posted on 03/09/2006 4:24:46 AM PST by tdewey10
Sandia National Laboratories has developed a machine that produces plasmas that exceed temperatures of two billion degrees Kelvin -- hotter than the interiors of stars, the Labs' scientists say.
The principle mission of the "Z machine" was to create a high radiation output environment through which to test computer codes responsible for maintaining a safe and reliable nuclear weapons stockpile.
The results of the tests show the machine accomplishes just that. But, the hot outputs, the unexpected results of a non-nuclear reaction, might be able to explain how astrophysical entities like solar flares maintain their extreme temperatures. The energy also could be harnessed and used to produce the same amount of energy as large nuclear fusion plants, but in smaller, less costly nuclear facilities, say Lab officials.
Sandia is operated by Sandia Corp., a Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT ) company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nucelar Security Administration.
An MSNBC article has a little additional info: Excerpted from http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11732814/
"Sandia researchers still aren’t sure how the machine achieved the new record. Part of it is probably due to the replacement of the tungsten steel wires with slightly thicker steel wires, which allow the plasma ions to travel faster and thus achieve higher temperatures.
One thing that puzzles scientists is that the high temperature was achieved after the plasma’s ions should have been losing energy and cooling. Also, when the high temperature was achieved, the Z machine was releasing more energy than was originally put in, something that usually occurs only in nuclear reactions.
Sandia consultant Malcolm Haines theorizes that some unknown energy source is involved, which is providing the machine with an extra jolt of energy just as the plasma ions are beginning to slow down."
More information available here: http://www.physorg.com/news11538.html
Sandia’s Z machine has produced plasmas that exceed temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin — hotter than the interiors of stars. The unexpectedly hot output, if its cause were understood and harnessed, could eventually mean that smaller, less costly nuclear fusion plants would produce the same amount of energy as larger plants.
The phenomena also may explain how astrophysical entities like solar flares maintain their extreme temperatures.
The very high radiation output also creates new experimental environments to help validate computer codes responsible for maintaining a reliable nuclear weapons stockpile safely and securely — the principle mission of the Z facility.
“At first, we were disbelieving,” says Sandia project lead Chris Deeney. “We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result and not an ‘Ooops’!”
The results, recorded by spectrometers and confirmed by computer models created by John Apruzese and colleagues at Naval Research Laboratory, have held up over 14 months of additional tests.
A description of the achievement, as well as a possible explanation by Sandia consultant Malcolm Haines, well-known for his work in Z pinches at the Imperial College in London, appeared in the Feb. 24 Physical Review Letters.
Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory.
What happened and why?
Z’s energies in these experiments raised several questions.
First, the radiated x-ray output was as much as four times the expected kinetic energy input.
Ordinarily, in non-nuclear reactions, output energies are less — not greater — than the total input energies. More energy had to be getting in to balance the books, but from where could it come?
Second, and more unusually, high ion temperatures were sustained after the plasma had stagnated — that is, after its ions had presumably lost motion and therefore energy and therefore heat — as though yet again some unknown agent was providing an additional energy source to the ions.
Sandia’s Z machine normally works like this: 20 million amps of electricity pass through a small core of vertical tungsten wires finer than human hairs. The core is about the size of a spool of thread. The wires dissolve instantly into a cloud of charged particles called a plasma.
The plasma, caught in the grip of the very strong magnetic field accompanying the electrical current, is compressed to the thickness of a pencil lead. This happens very rapidly, at a velocity that would fly a plane from New York to San Francisco in several seconds.
At that point, the ions and electrons have nowhere further to go. Like a speeding car hitting a brick wall, they stop suddenly, releasing energy in the form of X-rays that reach temperatures of several million degrees — the temperature of solar flares.
The new achievement — temperatures of billions of degrees — was obtained in part by substituting steel wires in cylindrical arrays 55 mm to 80 mm in diameter for the more typical tungsten wire arrays, approximately only 20 mm in diameter. The higher velocities achieved over these longer distances were part of the reason for the higher temperatures.
(The use of steel allowed for detailed spectroscopic measurements of these temperatures impossible to obtain with tungsten.)
Haines theorized that the rapid conversion of magnetic energy to a very high ion plasma temperature was achieved by unexpected instabilities at the point of ordinary stagnation: that is, the point at which ions and electrons should have been unable to travel further. The plasma should have collapsed, its internal energy radiated away. But for approximately 10 nanoseconds, some unknown energy was still pushing back against the magnetic field.
Haines’ explanation theorizes that Z’s magnetic energies create microturbulences that increase the kinetic energies of ions caught in the field’s grip. Already hot, the extra jolt of kinetic energy then produces increased heat, as ions and their accompanying electrons release energy through friction-like viscous mixing even after they should have been exhausted.
High temperatures previously had been assumed to be produced entirely by the kinetic flight and intersection of ions and electrons, unaided by accompanying microturbulent fields.
Z is housed in a flat-roofed building about the size and shape of an aging high-school gymnasium.
This work has already prompted other studies at Sandia and at the University of Nevada at Reno.
Source: Sandia National Laboratories
This machine sounds like some mechanism of doom, it must be eradicated.
The plasma should have collapsed, its internal energy radiated away. But for approximately 10 nanoseconds, some unknown energy was still pushing back against the magnetic field.
Aha! The beginning of the warp core! (Note to trekkers. I know, it's not the way it's really done in a warp engine so spare me the post)
How do they keep the high temperatures from vaporizing everything around it? Is it because it achieves the temperature for only a short period of time? Sorry, I'm not good in science.
The high temperature gas is not in contact with anything physical - it is restrained by powerful magnetic fields.
L
Fusion Power baby!
However, fusion is not a laboratory reality as yet.
I think the problem is "containing the fuel" while continuing to feed in more fuel. Once you get a "leak", everything cools very rapidly & the reaction goes kaput.
Sustainability is what power generation is all about.
Purdue scientist defends his fusion work
In 2002, Taleyarkhan -- then at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee -- announced he and his research team had achieved fusion in a table top experiment by blasting a jar of solvent with strong ultrasonic vibrations.
He said the vibrations collapsed tiny gas bubbles in the liquid, heating them to millions of degrees -- hot enough to initiate fusion, the melding of hydrogen atoms to produce light and energy.
However, since then scientists who have tried to replicate the experiment have been unsuccessful. The science journal Nature reported Wednesday several Purdue faculty members -- including Lefteri Tsoukalas, the head of Purdue's School of Nuclear Engineering -- now doubt the finding.
Possibly some new sub atomic force? Maybe something beyond some little particles smacking into each other?
Sounds like it. The interesting comment at the end of the article was that Sandia is now focused on figuring this phenomena out - its seems to be more important than the original purpose of the Z machine.
This seems far more feasible method of fusion than the 10 billion toka-takaourmoney-mak they're building in France(?).
We just need a billionaire to put a little money in it - hey Soros--I know you read FR! instead of wasting your money on losing Democratic candidates - why not do something useful and start a company to commercialize this discovery. ;p
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