First Plasma on the Levitated Dipole Experiment 447
deglr6328 writes "In light of recent, somewhat disappointing news in the world of nuclear fusion research, it is worth noting that there are still reasons to keep up hope that some breakthroughs are yet to be made. At 12:53 pm on the 13th. of this month the Levitated Dipole Experiment achieved its first plasma. The Levitated Dipole Experiment(LDX), built at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center as a joint project of Columbia University and MIT, is a magnetic confinement fusion research device, that unlike all previous stellarator, reverse-field pinch and tokamak like experiments, uses a superconducting levitated torus to confine its plasma. The LDX's achievement of first plasma is, in a way, about 17 years in the making even though it has only been in construction since 1999. The concept for LDX was first considered by Akira Hasegawa as he was studying the data coming in from the Voyager missions which flew through the (dipole) magnetospheres of the outer planets. He noticed that unlike laboratory confined fusion plasmas which tended to be unstable, difficult to control, and which lost energy quickly, the plasma of a magnetosphere is intrinsically more quiescent, stable and actually reacts favorably (increases its density/temperature) to outside perturbations such as ie. bombardment by a solar storm. A highly informative and interesting video of operations on the day of first shot can be found here. Congratulations to the scientists and engineers who have worked very hard on getting the project to this point and here's looking forward to the possibility that LDX will reveal fundamentally new physics in the arduous quest for clean fusion energy."
What to do now? (Score:2, Funny)
Major setback (Score:5, Funny)
Impulse engines (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:4, Funny)
wait...who was working on that? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What to do now? (Score:2, Funny)
disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
Making Plasma? Someone check their server... (Score:4, Funny)
Too Much Text In Summary!!! (Score:4, Funny)
In other news ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Impulse engines (Score:3, Funny)
Crack.
Pretty pictures (Score:2, Funny)
Re:disappointing (Score:2, Funny)
It's more efficient than incandescent and the bulbs last longer, but it's not exciting every time I turn on a light.
Oh, but it is getting excited
Re:Why do we not use the existing fusion reactor? (Score:4, Funny)
I must admire your long term view though. I had never considered the possibility of running out of hydrogen in the solar system.
Summery for the Bandwidth Challenged (Score:5, Funny)
Brought to you by The Undergraduate Research Assistants Pool - a statistically significant proportion of particle physicists agree, only Undergraduate Research Assistants can stand up to the kind of abuse a particle physicist demands.
[TITLE SEQUENCE]
[lively tour of facility]
[8 minutes of reality-show-finally like filler including:
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with research assistant]
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with research assistant]
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with female research assistant]
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with research assistant in blue hard hat]
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with Physicist]
[clip montage of scientific equipment]
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with research assistant in blue hard hat]
]
[nasa tv style clip of scientists congratulating each other over inscrutable data on distant CRT's during and after triumphant success]
[replay of triumphant success, this time with wholly satisfying video of glowing blue science goodness]
[obligatory fade out to historical prospective text that scrolls by too quickly]
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming
Doc Ock unavailable for comment... (Score:2, Funny)
And Doc Ock was unavailable for comment...
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:4, Funny)
Oh yeah? Sure there is! Everyone knows that subatomic particles use the metric system not English measurements, and a displacment of of 3.048 E14 just isn't a round enough number to be likely.
Re:Impulse engines (Score:1, Funny)
Kirk: Am I correct in assuming that a fusion explosion of 97 megatons will result if a starship impulse engine is overloaded?
Spock: No, sir. (helpfully) 97.835 megatons.
Re:the gods themselves (Score:2, Funny)
Who is this Asimov of whom you speak? An author, no doubt, guessing from context. Did he write anything else, or is he just a one-hit wonder?
Re:Emergence (Score:2, Funny)