Liquid carbon made for first time with high-power lasers, could advance nuclear fusion

A team of scientists, led by the University of Rostock and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), has successfully created liquid carbon for the first time. This material was previously thought impossible to study in a laboratory setting.


“This is the first time we have ever been able to observe the structure of liquid carbon experimentally,” said Professor Dominik Kraus, Head of Carbon Working Group from the University of Rostock and HZDR.


“Our experiment confirms the predictions made by sophisticated simulations of liquid carbon. We are looking at a complex form of liquid, comparable to water, that has very special structural properties.”

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Unleashing Nuclear Fusion

LASERS ARE useful for a lot of things. They made CDs work (when they were still a thing). They also provide hours of entertainment for cats (and their humans). 

But they can also create magnetic conditions similar to the surface of the Sun in a lab, according to new research by scientists at Osaka University. And that might help a wide range of other scientific disciplines, ranging from solar astronomy to fusion.

The experiment used a high-power laser, known as Gekko XII, at the Institute of Laser Engineering at Osaka University. Originally designed for fusion experiments, this laser is powerful enough to vaporize a piece of plastic if it is focused on it. 

Or, more accurately, it is powerful enough to turn it into plasma.

That is just what the researchers did. They zapped a small piece of plastic with Gekko XII that sat on top of a magnet emitting a weak magnetic field. 

The laser blast, which only lasted for about 500 picoseconds, created a high-energy plasma that distorts an already weak magnetic field over the sample. 

That combination of a weak magnetic field and plasma created a situation known as a “pure electron outflow.”  READ MORE...