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....the source of the sudden and puzzling collapse of heat that precedes disruptions that can damage doughnut-shaped tokamak fusion facilities. Researchers traced the collapse to the 3D disordering of the strong magnetic fields that bottle up the hot, charged plasma gas that fuels the reactions. The strong magnetic fields substitute in fusion facilities for the immense gravity that holds fusion reactions in place in celestial bodies. But when disordered by plasma instability in laboratory experiments the field lines allow the superhot plasma heat to rapidly escape confinement. Such million-degree heat crushes plasma particles together to release fusion energy and can...

A 47-year-old MIT professor has died after being shot in his Brookline home Monday night, the DA said. Officers from the Massachusetts State Police and Brookline Police Department responded to reports of a man shot on Gibb Street. Nuno F.G. Loureiro was transported to a local hospital and succumbed to his injuries Tuesday morning. Police are actively investigating the death as a homicide, according to the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office, writing in a statement, “No further information is being released at this time.” The DA has not said they arrested anyone in connection with the homicide and or identified any...

MIT professor Nuno Loureiro was killed in a shooting at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts Monday night, the school confirmed. Loureiro, a nuclear science and engineering professor from Portugal, was 47 years old. A Brookline police spokesperson said officers responded to a call for gunshots at an apartment on Gibbs Street at about 8:30 p.m. "A victim was located who had been shot multiple times," Brookline police deputy superintendent Paul Campbell told WBZ-TV. Loureiro was taken by ambulance to a Boston hospital, where he died Tuesday morning. No other information about the shooting was immediately released and authorities did not...

Russian scientists say they’ve built a new kind of engine that could cut the trip to Mars down to just one month. A working prototype already exists, and it’s unlike anything currently used in space. ============================================================= Russia’s New Plasma Engine. Credit: IZVESTIA/Sergey Lantyukhov | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel ============================================================= A new propulsion system developed by Russian scientists is generating buzz in the spaceflight community. According to researchers from Rosatom’s Troitsk Institute, a laboratory-tested magnetoplasma engine could make it possible to travel from Earth to Mars in as little as one to two months—a significant leap from today’s six-...

A narrow-band image of the Sun at a wavelength of λ=588.9nm, that of a well known solar sodium line also known as the “NaD line.” The image was acquired during recent first light efforts with the VTF at the Inouye, and shows how precisely the structures within a sunspot are resolved. Each pixel in the original version of the image corresponds to 10 km (or 6.2 miles) on the Sun. (Credit: VTF/KIS/NSF/NSO/AURA) *********************************************************************** In a nutshell * The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope’s new Visible Tunable Filter (VTF) instrument has achieved “first light,” capturing detailed images of sunspots at an...

WEST (Credit: CEA-IRFM). A new record in fusion has been achieved using a device internally clad in tungsten, a development that could set the pace for helping make fusion energy viable at the commercial scale. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) facility, reports that the device was able to sustain hot fusion plasma nearing temperatures of 50 million degrees Celsius for a record-breaking six minutes. Relying on 1.15 gigajoules of power, the latest achievement saw a 15% increase in energy, as well as twice the density of previous experiments. The new milestone was set using...

(Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have developed a new strategy in the quest to harness fusion to produce electricity: combining two existing methods of managing plasma to allow greater overall flexibility. The PPPL team’s new dual approach brings together electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) methods with resonant magnetic perturbations (RMP), marking the first time a simulation showing how they can be used together could facilitate greater control of plasma during fusion reactions. In simple terms, fusion produces energy by replicating the natural processes occurring on the surface of...

A medication for high cholesterol can drastically cut "forever chemicals" (PFAS)—associated with an increased risk of cancer and banned in Europe—in the blood, researchers said. But the drug was not suitable for widespread and prolonged use because of its side effects. A clinical trial with cholestyramine led to a reduction 20 times greater than the normal result without intervention. "The effect of treatment was actually a decrease in the plasma of 63 percent," said Lindhardt. Researchers say the results are promising for treating people who have been exposed to high doses of the "forever chemicals", so called because they tend...

The Orion: A molecular cloud shows cosmic filamentary structures where stars are being born. Image: ESA / Herschel / Ph. André, D Polychroni, A. Roy, V Könyves, N Schneider for the Gould Belt survey Key Program ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the first part of this series, we saw that electromagnetic processes in plasmas – electrically conducting gases – could, over trillions of years, produce the giant filaments that we see today as the largest structures in the universe. This happened without a Big Bang, without dark energy or dark matter, based on processes that we observe here on Earth in the laboratory...

Whirlpool Galaxy, photographed by the Webb Space Telescope. Photo: NASA ESA Webb / A Adamo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Introduction by Asia Times Science Editor Jonathan Tennenbaum In September Eric Lerner created a sensation with his Asia Times article, “Saying goodbye to the Big Bang,” arguing that the Big Bang theory is contradicted by an overwhelming mass of astronomical evidence accumulated over decades, including recent data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Eric Lerner ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The data forced even a pair of hitherto staunch advocates of the Big Bang, the well-known astrophysicists Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser, to admit that something must be...

This theory is a candidate for most major advance there has ever been in our understanding of human and solar system origins

The Voyager 2 spacecraft is one of the testaments to human ingenuity! More than four decades after launch, the spacecraft continues to function, even in the harshest imaginable condition of deep space! Despite being billions of miles away, the tenacious spacecraft continues to send back amazing and even terrifying discoveries to the mission controllers on earth! One of the discoveries was a huge wall of fire when Voyager 2 crossed the boundary of our solar system! What happens at this boundary, and how do the events at this boundary affect us on the earth? Join us as we dive into...

The explosion comes courtesy of a dead sunspot called AR2987.... The sunspot explosion released loads of energy in the form of radiation, which also led to a coronal mass ejection (CME) — explosive balls of solar material — both of which could spur more intense northern lights in Earth's upper atmosphere. The material in that CME is likely to impact Earth on April 14... The idea of a "dead" sunspot is more poetic than scientific, said Philip Judge, a solar physicist at the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), but the convection of the sun...

You might have heard of PFAS, a synthetic chemical found in legacy firefighting foams, non-stick pans, carpets, clothes and stain- or water-resistant materials and paints. PFAS stands for "per- and poly-fluorinated alkyl substances." These molecules, made up of chains of carbon and fluorine atoms, are nicknamed "forever chemicals" because they don't degrade in our bodies. There is global concern about PFAS because they accumulate in our bodies over time. There was no way to reduce the amount of PFAS found in the body—until now. Our new randomized clinical trial, has found regularly donating blood or plasma can reduce blood PFAS...

Scientists at EPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center and DeepMind have jointly developed a new method for controlling plasma configurations for use in nuclear fusion research. EPFL’s Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) has decades of experience in plasma physics and plasma control methods. DeepMind is a scientific discovery company acquired by Google in 2014 that's committed to ‘solving intelligence to advance science and humanity. Together, they have developed a new magnetic control method for plasmas based on deep reinforcement learning, and applied it to a real-world plasma for the first time in the SPC’s tokamak research facility, TCV. Their study has just been...

https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2022-02/processed/jupiter-aurora_1024.jpg ======================================================================== Jupiter has finally been observed spitting out X-rays in high-energy wavelengths. Emanating from the giant planet's permanent auroras, and detected by NASA's space-based X-ray telescope NuSTAR, the emissions are the most energetic light seen coming from any planet in the Solar System (aside from Earth). The detection could shed light on the most powerful auroras in the Solar System, and solves a longstanding mystery: why the joint ESA-NASA Ulysses spacecraft didn't detect any Jovian X-rays in its nearly three decades of operation between 1990 and 2009. Jupiter's auroras constitute an absolutely fascinating phenomenon. At both its poles, the...

Paris (AFP) – Covid treatments using plasma taken from the blood of recovered coronavirus patients should not be given to people with mild or moderate illness, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. Convalescent plasma showed some early promise when given intravenously to people sick with Covid-19. But in advice published in the British Medical Journal, the WHO now says that "current evidence shows that it does not improve survival nor reduce the need for mechanical ventilation, and it is costly and time-consuming to administer". It made a "strong recommendation" against the use of blood plasma in people who do not...

The vaccine wipes out the immune system. pic.twitter.com/O9hiUObWz3 — bristolblues (@BristolBlues32) August 29, 2021 Anyone who has received their Vaccine can not donate convalescent plasma to other Covid patients. The Vaccine wipes out natural Covid antibodies making the convalescent plasma ineffective for treatment. Once people are vaccinated, they cannot donate plasma. The vaccine causes spike antibodies, and for convalescent plasma, they need nucleocapsid antibodies. PHOENIX – While it’s promising to see people getting vaccinated for COVID-19, a new problem that blood banks face is less convalescent plasma donations. The reason why: after you get the vaccine, you cannot donate plasma....

Plasma test in the MAST tokamak, a plasma fusion chamber. =================================================================================== A new way of classifying magnetized plasma has led to the discovery of 10 previously unknown topological phases of plasma. Learning more about these phases, and specifically the transitions between them, could help plasma physicists chase down the white whale of energy - plasma fusion. That's because the transitions between them support edge modes, or waves at the intersection of the plasma surfaces. These exotic excitations could broaden the potential practical uses for magnetized plasma. "These findings could lead to possible applications of these exotic excitations in space and...

The visible surface of the Sun, or the photosphere, is around 6,000°C. But a few thousand kilometers above it – a small distance when we consider the size of the Sun – the solar atmosphere, also called the corona, is hundreds of times hotter, reaching a million degrees celsius or higher. This spike in temperature, despite the increased distance from the Sun’s main energy source, has been observed in most stars, and represents a fundamental puzzle that astrophysicists have mulled over for decades. In 1942, the Swedish scientist Hannes Alfvén proposed an explanation. He theorized that magnetized waves of plasma...