Gravitational confinement— Using a ridiculously huge mass to make enough gravity to cause fusion. The sun and stars do this but humans won’t be doing it anytime soon. The quest for breakeven, and beyond We’re very close to achievingbreakeven, which is when we get more energy out of a...
Because stars are so massive and made out of gas clouds, their own intense gravity is always trying to collapse them. The fusion reactions happening in the core are like a giant fusion bomb that is trying to explode the star. The balance between the gravitational forces and the explosive ...
Fusion Bombs Nuclear Bomb Delivery Consequences and Health Risks of Nuclear Bombs A Perilous Future Atomic Structure and Radioactivity This illustration shows how an atom is made up of three subatomic particles — protons, neutrons and electrons. Loekiepix/Shutterstock Before we can get to ...
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved a breakthrough in nuclear fusion known as “ignition.” Ignition, or “scientific energy breakeven,” occurs when the energy input into a nuclear fusion system is less than the energy gained. This...
Cillian Murphy stars as Dr Oppenheimer, the film’s titular character and so-called father of the atom bomb.Picture: Alamy What instruments feature in the soundtrack forOppenheimer? While silence is one of the most powerful features employed throughout the three-hour-long film epic, the instrum...
North Korea is threatening to test a hydrogen bomb, a weapon more powerful than the atomic bombs that devastated the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II. Here's how they differ.
Nuclear fusion occurs when extreme pressure forces the protons in the nucleus of one element to combine or fuse into another, heavier element. Using the ever famous E=mc2, the resulting difference in mass is converted to energy. Some of that released energy is emitted as gamma rays. The fusi...
The sun's spherical structure is a result of two constantly competing forces: gravity from the dense mass at the sun's center trying to pull all of its plasma inward versus energy from the nuclear fusion taking place in the core, causing the plasma to expand. ...
LENR stands for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. This is the energy of a thermonuclear bomb, and in conventional thinking, it requires such a large activation energy to initiate that fusion can only happen at the center of the sun or in a hydrogen bomb, which uses ...
What’s a Proton, Anyway? The Large Hadron Collider is mainly a machine for smashing protons into each other. But what’s a proton? First and foremost, it’s a mess. A total mess. As ugly and chaotic as a hydrogen atom is elegant and simple. Ok, then, what’s a hydrogen atom?