Magnetic Fusion Engines

A new study offers a new means of propulsion that could revolutionize space travel  

the Magnetic Fusion Plasma Drive (MFPD). Credit: Created with Imagine

Magnetic Fusion Plasma Engines Could Carry us Across the Solar System and Into Interstellar Space

Missions to the Moon, missions to Mars, robotic explorers to the outer Solar System, a mission to the nearest star, and maybe even a spacecraft to catch up to interstellar objects passing through our system. If you think this sounds like a description of the coming age of space exploration, then you’d be correct! 

At this moment, there are multiple plans and proposals for missions that will send astronauts and/or probes to all of these destinations to conduct some of the most lucrative scientific research ever performed. Naturally, these mission profiles raise all kinds of challenges, not the least of which is propulsion.

Simply put, humanity is reaching the limits of what conventional (chemical) propulsion can do. To send missions to Mars and other deep space destinations, advanced propulsion technologies are required that offer high acceleration (delta-v), specific impulse (Isp), and fuel efficiency. 

In a recent paper, Leiden Professor Florian Neukart proposes how future missions could rely on a novel propulsion concept known as the Magnetic Fusion Plasma Drive (MFPD). This device combines aspects of different propulsion methods to create a system that offers high energy density and fuel efficiency significantly greater than conventional methods.

Florian Neukart is an Assistant Professor with the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS) at Leiden University and a Board Member of the Swiss quantum technology developer Terra Quantum AG. The preprint of his paper recently appeared online and is being reviewed for publication in Elsevier. 

According to Neukart, technologies that can surmount conventional chemical propulsion (CCP) are paramount in the present era of space exploration. In particular, these technologies must offer greater energy efficiency, thrust, and capability for long-duration missions.  READ MORE...

A Look Inside ALICE

A look inside ALICE at the Large Hadron Collider. ALICE is one of the LHC's four particle detectors. Image: CERN/LHC

Recently astronomers caught a strange mystery: extremely high-energy particles spitting out of the surface of the Sun when it was relatively calm. Now a team of theorists have proposed a simple solution to the mystery. We just have to look a little bit under the surface.

In 2022 the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory detected a flash of extremely high gamma ray radiation coming from the disk of the sun. To generate that kind of radiation required a particle with TeV energies slamming into another particle. 

This observation came on the heels of over six years worth of observations with the Fermi Large Area Telescope in orbit of the Earth. That telescope found significant gamma ray detections also coming from the Sun. 

Those detections were of lower energy than the HAWC results, but pointed in the same general direction.  What was especially surprising about these observations was that these remarkably high-energy particles seemed to be emitted from the Sun when it was in a relatively quiet state. 

Occasionally solar storms and flares rip across the surface of the Sun, and naturally these generate enormous amounts of energies which can easily create high-energy particles. But when the Sun is quiet it’s much harder to identify a sufficiently large source of energy to power these kinds of processes.  READ MORE...

Wanting out Attention

The energetic phenomena known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are one of the greatest cosmic mysteries today. These mysterious flashes of light are visible in the radio wave part of the spectrum and usually last only a few milliseconds before fading away forever. 

Since the first FRB was observed in 2007, astronomers have looked forward to the day when instruments of sufficient sensitivity would be able to detect them regularly.

That day has arrived with the completion of the 500-Meter FAST Radio Telescope (aka. Tianyan, “Eye of Heaven”). Since it commenced operations, this observatory has vastly expanded the number of detected FRBs. 

In fact, according to research led by the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAO/CAS), the observatory detected a total of 1,652 independent bursts from a single source in 47 days.

The research, which recently appeared in the journal Science, was conducted by researchers from the Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey (CRAFTS) project. 

CRAFTS includes researchers from the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and multiple universities in China, Australia, and the U.S.  TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...