Wednesday, May 3
Pioneerng Nuclear Fusion
To achieve fusion, the U.S. National Ignition Facility focuses its lasers onto a gold cylinder containing a diamond capsule filled with hydrogen isotopes. NIF could need safety upgrades, if its energy yields continue to climb. Credit: UPI/Alamy Stock Photo
Last month, the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) fired its lasers up to full power for the first time since December, when it achieved its decades-long goal of ‘ignition’ by producing more energy during a nuclear reaction than it consumed. The latest run didn’t come close to matching up: NIF achieved only 4% of the output it did late last year. But scientists didn’t expect it to.
Building on NIF’s success, they are now flexing the programme’s experimental muscles, trying to better understand the nuclear-fusion facility’s capabilities. Here, Nature looks at what’s to come for NIF, and whether it will propel global efforts to create a vast supply of clean energy for the planet.
WHAT WAS THE GOAL OF THE LATEST EXPERIMENT?
NIF, based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, is a stadium-sized facility that fires 192 lasers at a tiny gold cylinder containing a diamond capsule. Inside the capsule sits a frozen pellet of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. The lasers trigger an implosion, creating extreme heat and pressure that drive the hydrogen isotopes to fuse into helium, releasing additional energy.
One of the main challenges in getting this scheme to work is fabricating the diamond capsule. Even the smallest defects — bacterium-sized pockmarks, metal contamination or variations in shape and thickness — affect the implosion, and thus the pressure and heat that drive the fusion reactions.
Record-breaking experiments in 2021 and 2022 used the best capsules available, but in March, while waiting for a new batch, NIF scientists ran an experiment with a capsule that was thicker on one side than the other. Modelling suggested that they could offset this imperfection by adjusting the beams coming from the lasers, to produce a more uniform implosion. This was a test of their theoretical predictions, says Richard Town, a physicist who heads the lab’s inertial-confinement fusion science programme at the LLNL.
The results fell short of their predictions, and researchers are now working to understand why. But if this line of investigation pays off, Town says, “it opens up more capsules for us to use and will improve our understanding of implosion”. READ MORE...
NIF, based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, is a stadium-sized facility that fires 192 lasers at a tiny gold cylinder containing a diamond capsule. Inside the capsule sits a frozen pellet of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. The lasers trigger an implosion, creating extreme heat and pressure that drive the hydrogen isotopes to fuse into helium, releasing additional energy.
One of the main challenges in getting this scheme to work is fabricating the diamond capsule. Even the smallest defects — bacterium-sized pockmarks, metal contamination or variations in shape and thickness — affect the implosion, and thus the pressure and heat that drive the fusion reactions.
Record-breaking experiments in 2021 and 2022 used the best capsules available, but in March, while waiting for a new batch, NIF scientists ran an experiment with a capsule that was thicker on one side than the other. Modelling suggested that they could offset this imperfection by adjusting the beams coming from the lasers, to produce a more uniform implosion. This was a test of their theoretical predictions, says Richard Town, a physicist who heads the lab’s inertial-confinement fusion science programme at the LLNL.
The results fell short of their predictions, and researchers are now working to understand why. But if this line of investigation pays off, Town says, “it opens up more capsules for us to use and will improve our understanding of implosion”. READ MORE...
Tuesday, May 2
China Putting Military Base in UAE
Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, left, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang attend a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Monday, July 22, 2019. Andy Wong-Pool/Getty Images
- China has resumed the construction of a military base in the UAE, leaker papers show.
- Plans for a Chinese base had earlier been halted amid US concerns.
- China is riling the US by forming ties with its traditional allies in the region.
China resumed construction of a military base in the United Arab Emirates, a move likely to alarm US officials and increase concerns that another US ally in the Middle East is drawing closer to China.
According to leaked US intelligence documents obtained by The Washington Post, construction has resumed at a Chinese military base just outside Abu Dhabi.
Plans for a base were halted in 2021 after the US voiced its objections. But The Post's documents indicate that the plans now appear to be going ahead.
According to the report, US intelligence is monitoring Chinese activity at the base and at other locations in the oil-rich UAE amid concerns that it is drawing closer to Beijing. The presence of Chinese officials at several sensitive military sites have alarmed US intelligence, the report says. READ MORE...
It Makes No Difference
- China's economy is growing faster than the USA
- China's military is growing faster than the USA
- China is building fossil fuel energy plants
- China is slow walking its progress in going towards green energy
- China owns ONE THIRD of the USA's national debt
- China no longer wants to use the US dollar when trading
- China continues to influence US politics
- China continues to steal intellectual property from US industries
- China, BRICS, and Saudi Arabia are against the USA
Do we have a TWO PARTY POLICITICAL SYSTEM in the USA?
Theoretically... yes.
But, the conservative side of the system is being suppressed so that Americans only receive ONE SIDE of the issue.
One side limits one's ability to make intelligence decisions.
GREED - POWER - CONTROL - (WEALTH)
is now the foundation of all American Life...
we are constantly pushing towards wanting more...
wanting more can only come from one of two ways:
- using a credit card
- earning more income
Note: if the income is not there, then one will always use credit to get what they want
- How will our life change is the rest of the world no longer wants to use the US Dollar?
- How will our life change with AGI Robots replace 80% of all jobs in the next two years?
- How will our life change if the conservative voice is 100% suppressed?
- How will our life change if our capitalistic society fails in the global marketplace?
- How will our life change is China becomes the global leader?
- How will our life change if the middle class in the USA is destroyed?
YOU HAVE NO IDEA THAT YOU ARE BEING TREATED LIKE BOILING FROGS...
Finding Unexpected Galaxies
The James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding galaxies that shouldn’t exist, a scientist has warned.
Six of the earliest and most massive galaxies that Nasa’s breakthrough telescope has seen so far appear to be bigger and more mature than they should be given where they are in the universe, researchers have warned.
The new findings build on previous research where scientists reported that despite coming from the very beginnings of the universe, the galaxies were as mature as our own Milky Way.
Now a new paper has appeared to confirm those findings, by “stress testing” the galaxies to better understand how they formed.
It suggests that, if scientists have not made a mistake, we may be missing some fundamental information about the universe.
“If the masses are right, then we are in uncharted territory,” said Mike Boylan-Kolchin, from the University.of Texas at Austin, and the author of a new paper examining the unsual galaxies. “We’ll require something very new about galaxy formation or a modification to cosmology. One of the most extreme possibilities is that the universe was expanding faster shortly after the Big Bang than we predict, which might require new forces and particles.”
Professor Boylan-Kolchin’s paper, ‘Stress testing ΛCDM with high-redshift galaxy candidates’, has been published in Nature Astronomy this week.
It suggests that the information from the JWST proposes a profound dilemma for scientists. The data indicates that there mighttbe somehitn wrong with the dark energy and cold dark matter paradigm, or ΛCDM, that has been guiding cosmology for decades.
Usually, galaxies convert around 10 per cent of their gas into stars. But the newly discovered galaxies would have to be converting almost the entirety of it into stars.
That is theoretically possible. But it is a departure from what scientists would ever have expected. READ MORE...
Monday, May 1
Prosecutors Have the Ability to Decline Criminal Charges
Chief prosecutor (right) of Manhattan DA Alvin Braggs office (left) bragged about allowing a murderer to escape jail time. (Getty | Adobe Stock | Manhattan DA)
Chief Assistant District Attorney Reiss said in 2017 that prosecutors can use their power to ignore mandatory minimum laws at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
"Nobody understands the amount of discretion that prosecutors have," Reiss said. She stressed the independent "power" they have to decline prosecution cases can effect systemic change in the criminal justice system, which she believes is racist.
ALVIN BRAGG PROMISES NOT TO PROSECUTE THEFT TO ESTABLISH 'RACIAL EQUITY' BALANCE: 'CRIME OF POVERTY'
"You know if [prosecutors] don't charge a crime, a judge can't sentence to that crime. If police officers make certain arrests, they [can] declin[e] to prosecute… And police officers can keep making… arrests but if the prosecutor decides not to prosecute that then that's it."
"At the federal level, talking about getting legislation passed in Congress to not have mandatory minimums or not… prosecutors unilaterally in each jurisdiction can do that on their own without any type of legislation statutorily not required. And they can choose what they want to charge and what not to charge, how they want to charge it, what to prosecute, what outcomes should be. They really have all of that power in their offices. But nobody understands that."
Reiss made the statements while heading the Institute for Innovation on Prosecution, an organization she founded in 2016 which collaborates with prosecution offices, including the Manhattan DA, to bring about racial equity reforms.
The institute believes in an ideologically driven approach to prosecution that takes into account historical factors. For example, the Institute argued in a report, signed with Reiss' name, that prosecutors must focus on "acknowledging our nation’s shameful history of slavery and racism which continues to cloud the criminal justice system."
About criminals, she has consistently argued for leniency and more understanding, including for those harming victims with violent assaults.
"So one of the first things [to] do is change the language: ‘the bad dude.’ What does that mean? What are the circumstances of that person coming into the criminal justice system in the first place? And what is the background to that person?" Reiss said. READ MORE...
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