Friday, 22 August 2008
">The Z machine
The Z-Machine, the most powerful X-ray generator in the world, installed in the desert of NM, has managed to create plasma with a temperature exceeds 2 billion Kelvins. This result, they went too incredible, raises many questions.
Ordinarily, the Z-Machine works as follows: 20 million amps passing through a network of tungsten son of the width of a human hair. In a kernel, the size of a ball of wool, son dissolve instantly to generate plasma, which is then compressed at high speed by a magnetic field, to occupy the thickness of a pencil . Once compressed, the ions and electrons have nowhere to go ( "point of stagnation") and, like a car launched at full speed against a wall, they stop abruptly dispelling a considerable amount of energy form of X-ray Thus, the Z machine was designed to generate temperatures of several million degrees, similar to those of solar flares.
But scientists have never thought that replacing son tungsten son of a steel cylindrical wider, they could reach temperatures exceeding one billion degrees: "At first we did not want to believe it. We have repeatedly handling, to be sure it was not a mistake, "says project manager Chris Deeney.
But then, what has really happened in the Sandia laboratory? In an article published this month in Physical Review Letters, Malcolm Haines, a consultant on behalf of Sandia, hypothesizes that this temperature is surprising due to the emergence of many instabilities to the "stagnation", cause the conversion of a considerable amount of magnetic energy to thermal energy, and this within a few nanoseconds.
Research is currently underway to learn more about this phenomenon. In any case, according to Malcolm Haines, obtaining such temperatures could be very helpful: it would facilitate the study of solar flares, and could also allow the construction of nuclear power plants more compact and less costly.
My conclusion
the Z-machine may well mark the beginning of a new era, which would go far beyond the simple production of energy. Malcolm Haines find it hard to explain why this machine produces four times more energy than it injected. So ... there might be something else, more dizzying, which would consider futures major scientific discoveries?
by erectusplus at 01:42 |
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