|
Thursday April 9, 2009
|
The
California-based National Ignition Facility has begun testing 192 lasers in an effort to create a fusion reaction comparable in power to that of a miniature sun, according to Space.com. The end goal is to focus the lasers on compressing and heating a single, pea-sized fuel capsule to
more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, which should trigger a thermonuclear reaction--one that hopefully doesn't separate California from the rest of the continental U.S. in the process.
"One of the major activities of the NIF is to explore the basics of fusion energy, building a miniature sun on Earth that could supply limitless, safe and carbon-free energy," said Ed Moses, National Ignition Facility (NIF) program director, in the article. The idea is that--hopefully--the fusion reaction reaction will somehow generate more energy than it takes to begin the reaction in the first place.
The report said that ignition testing scheduled for 2010 would focus 500 trillion watts of energy on
the pea-sized capsule containing deuterium and tritium fuel. "NIF has already
produced 25 times more energy than any other existing laser system, and also
became the first fusion laser facility to create the equivalent energy of
10,000 100-watt light bulbs, or one megajoule," the report said.
|
|
|
Mixx It
Digg It
Stumble
More...
April 9, 2009 7:41 PM
Would it be such a great loss if it did separate California from the rest of the continental US?