News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Sudden bursts of heat that can damage the inner walls of tokamak fusion experiments are a hurdle that operators of the facilities must overcome. Such bursts, called 'edge localized modes (ELMs),' occur in doughnut-shaped tokamak devices that house the hot, charged plasma that is used to replicate on Earth the power that drives the sun and other stars. Now researchers at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have directly observed a possible and previously unknown process that can trigger damaging ELMs.

Researchers have developed a new technique that allows them to assess radiation exposure in about an hour using an insulator material found in most modern electronics. The technique can be used to triage medical cases in the event of a radiological disaster.

Performing studies on a doubly magic isotope of tin, researchers have shown that the pion condensation should occur at around two times normal nuclear density, which can be realized in a neutron star with a mass of 1.4 times that of the Sun.

A new system allows detailed real-time observations of how materials are affected by a high-radiation environment. The system, developed at MIT and Sandia National Laboratories, could accelerate the development of better materials for nuclear plants.

The properties of the matter, which surrounds us in our everyday life, are typically the result of complex interactions between electrons. However, how matter behaves under extreme conditions is still largely unexplained. A research group at Kiel University and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf has developed a method to accurately describe the dynamic properties of this warm dense matter for the first time. They published their computer simulations in the current issue of the Physical Review Letters.