Miniture Sun Project
Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 9:12 am
How to build a star
Here is the boiled-down recipe for how the Livermore lab plans to cook up a star:
Step one: Build the largest laser in the world, preferably inside a drab-looking office building. (To do this, you'll have to suspend all previous notions about what a laser looks like. This one is basically a giant factory full of tubes. The laser beam, which is concentrated light, bounces back and forth over the distance of a mile, charging up as it goes.)
Step two: Split this humongous laser into 192 beams. Aim all of them -- firing-range style -- at a single point that's about the size of a BB.
Step three: On that tiny target, apply a smidge of deuterium and tritium, two reactive isotopes of hydrogen that can be extracted from seawater. Surround those atoms with a gold capsule that's smaller than a thimble.
Step four: Fire the laser!
If all goes well, the resulting reaction will be hotter than the center of the sun (more than 100 million degrees Celsius) and will exert more pressure than 100 billion atmospheres. This will smash the hydrogen isotopes together with so much force and heat that their nuclei will fuse, sending off energy and neutrons.
Voila. An itty-bitty star is born.
"There's no danger to the public," said Lynda Seaver, spokeswoman for the project.
"The [worst possible] mishap is, it doesn't work."
And, in those recent years, the project has fallen a year off schedule, the GAO says, with the expected completion date for the research now at the end of 2012.
Could it be December 21st 2012? Just asking...The complete article can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/science/04 ... tml?hpt=C2
Here is the boiled-down recipe for how the Livermore lab plans to cook up a star:
Step one: Build the largest laser in the world, preferably inside a drab-looking office building. (To do this, you'll have to suspend all previous notions about what a laser looks like. This one is basically a giant factory full of tubes. The laser beam, which is concentrated light, bounces back and forth over the distance of a mile, charging up as it goes.)
Step two: Split this humongous laser into 192 beams. Aim all of them -- firing-range style -- at a single point that's about the size of a BB.
Step three: On that tiny target, apply a smidge of deuterium and tritium, two reactive isotopes of hydrogen that can be extracted from seawater. Surround those atoms with a gold capsule that's smaller than a thimble.
Step four: Fire the laser!
If all goes well, the resulting reaction will be hotter than the center of the sun (more than 100 million degrees Celsius) and will exert more pressure than 100 billion atmospheres. This will smash the hydrogen isotopes together with so much force and heat that their nuclei will fuse, sending off energy and neutrons.
Voila. An itty-bitty star is born.
"There's no danger to the public," said Lynda Seaver, spokeswoman for the project.
"The [worst possible] mishap is, it doesn't work."
And, in those recent years, the project has fallen a year off schedule, the GAO says, with the expected completion date for the research now at the end of 2012.
Could it be December 21st 2012? Just asking...The complete article can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/science/04 ... tml?hpt=C2