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Nuclear fusion holds huge promise as a source of clean, abundant energy that could power the world. Now, fusion researchers at a national laboratory in the US have achieved something physicists have been working towards for decades, a process known as “ignition”.

This step involves getting more energy out from fusion reactions than is put in by a laser.

But just how close are we to producing energy from fusion that can power people’s homes? While the ignition is only a proof of principle and the first step in a very long process, other developments are also in the works and together they could spark renewed enthusiasm for making fusion a practical reality.

First, it’s important to recognise that the latest result is indeed a real milestone.

The researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California fired the world’s biggest laser at a capsule filled with hydrogen fuel, causing it to implode and starting fusion reactions that mimic what happens in the Sun.

The fusion energy released by the implosion was more than that put in by the laser, a massive achievement given that, just a few years ago, the NIF laser could only get out about a thousandth of the energy it put in.

However, around 10,000 times more energy had to be put into the laser than it produced in light energy.

It can only be run once a day. And every target is so exquisitely designed that each one costs thousands of dollars.

To produce a reactor for a working power station, you would need a laser that produced light energy at much greater efficiency (a few tens of percent) and shot targets successfully at ten times per second, with each target costing a few pence or so.

In addition, each laser shot would need to produce many times – perhaps 100 times – more energy out than was put in.

Very little research has actually been done on fusion “reactors”, where neutrons from the reactions would help drive a steam turbine to produce electricity. But there are other reasons for hope.

Firstly, while NIF has taken more than a decade to achieve ignition, during the same period, scientists have independently developed new lasers.

These use electronic devices called diodes to transfer energy to the laser and are very, very efficient, converting a good fraction of the electricity from the grid into laser light.

Prototype versions of such lasers have been proven to work at the rates of 10 times per second, which would be required for them to be useful in fusion.

These lasers are not yet of the size needed for fusion, but the technology is proven, and the UK leads in this type of research.

Also, the approach to fusion used by the scientists at NIF has some well-known, inherent inefficiencies, and there are several other ideas that could be much more effective.

Nobody is absolutely certain that these other ideas would work, as they have their own unique problems, and have never been tried at scale.

To do so would require hundreds of millions of dollars of investment for each of them with no guarantee of success (otherwise it would not be research).

However, there is now a wind of change blowing: the private sector.

Various funds with a very long-term outlook have started to invest in new start-up firms that are touting fusion as a commercially viable source of energy.

Given that it was private industry that has revolutionised the electric car market (and the rocket industry), maybe that sector could also give fusion the “kick” it requires.

Private firms can work a lot faster than governments, and pivot quickly to adopt new ideas when required.

Estimates of the total private funding in the sector now stand in excess of $2 billion (roughly Rs. 16,500 crore), peanuts compared with the $2 trillion (roughly Rs. 165 lakh crore) in revenue produced by the oil and gas industry each year.

There is still a lot of room in the marketplace for the high-risk, high-pay-off players.

The latest results show that the basic science works: the laws of physics do not prevent us from achieving the goal of unlimited clean energy from fusion.

The problems are technical and economic. While fusion may be too far off to solve matters on the timescale of a decade or two, the latest advance will at least bolster enthusiasm about solving one of humanity’s grand challenges.


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Hubble finds missing globular cluster in Milky Way’s crowded stellar halo

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Hubble finds missing globular cluster in Milky Way’s crowded stellar halo

A striking new image captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has shed light on an underexplored gatekeeper of our galactic neighbours’ achievements and tragedies. Adorned with multi-hued stars, the spherical cluster glitters amid the expanse of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. This type of globular cluster is a very dense grouping of stars — about the same mass as 100,000 suns — that orbit all around the centre of their galaxy. Stars in a cluster are typically roughly the same age, as they formed from the same collapsing gas cloud. In this new view, stars show up in temperatures indicated in red and blue colours: red for colder and blue for hotter stars.

Hubble Maps Forgotten Star Cluster ESO 591-12 to Uncover Milky Way’s Ancient Stellar Secrets

As per a report from NASA’s Hubble team, ESO 591-12 was imaged during the Hubble Missing Globular Clusters Survey—an initiative targeting 34 Milky Way globular clusters that had never been observed by the space telescope. The aim is to construct a comprehensive database of the ages, distances, and stellar populations of all the galaxy’s known globular clusters and star formations. However, it has always been tough for telescopes on Earth to pick out individual stars in these densely populated regions, so Hubble’s high resolution has done much to finally be able to track the movements of stars to unlock their histories and formation.

The ESO 591-12 data are part of an ongoing study to improve knowledge of the formation and evolution of globular clusters in the galaxy’s bulge and halo. These star clusters are cosmic fossils that have preserved cosmic conditions from the primordial universe. Their work helps build a fuller narrative of the evolution of the Milky Way and how it has changed over billions of years.

This new image is a further example of how advanced space-based observing facilities are helping astronomers to excavate the contents of the dark and dusty skeleton cloaking the Milky Way and sculpt a better understanding of not only the universe’s evolution but also that of our cosmic home.
Each one tells part of the astronomical story, and Hubble is digging out new chapters to enrich the tale, such as probing data for clusters as much as ESO 591-12, which have been mostly neglected until now. This finding adds to our knowledge of the early universe by shining a spotlight on something that was in plain sight.

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Very Massive Stars Blow Away Outer Layers in Powerful Winds Before Black Hole Collapse

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Massive stars shed extreme mass before collapsing into black holes

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Massive stars shed extreme mass before collapsing into black holes

New research indicates that the most monstrously huge stars — those more than 100 times as massive as the sun — shed at least 20 times more matter before they collapse than previously thought to do so as they cool off to become black holes. These stars blow off a significant portion of their outer layers in quite powerful stellar winds over the brief but intense course of their lives, leaving behind low masses at the end. One benefit of this extreme mass loss is that it can account for observed strangeness in stars such as those in the Tarantula Nebula, providing new information on stellar evolution, black hole formation, and sources of gravitational waves.

Hurricane-like Stellar Winds Explain Extreme Mass Loss in Universe’s Most Massive Stars

As per a report from Space.com, researchers used sophisticated models and observations to learn that very massive stars give off winds so powerful they act more like hurricanes than gentle solar breezes. Their results agree very well with observations of WNh-type Wolf-Rayet stars in the Tarantula Nebula, which are hotter and more compact than would be expected by standard models. The improved models explain the very high temperatures at the surface and the stability of hydrogen, which address previous challenges.

One key subject in this study is R136a1 — the most massive known star — with a mass up to 230 times that of the sun. The researchers suggested that it either formed as a single star of around 200 solar masses or as a binary star system where the two stars had a combined mass of about 200 solar masses. In both such cases, the star must have lost a huge amount of mass early in its life, so the findings would call into question how it is that massive stars can live long enough to leave such a wreckage in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The implications extend to black hole formation as well. More massive stellar winds erode more mass, resulting in the production of smaller black holes and decreasing the chances of creating elusive intermediate-mass black holes. This revision also enhances the matches of the model with the observed gravitational wave signal of a coalescing black hole binary.

Although the models are restricted to stars in the Tarantula Nebula, the researchers stress that in order for their findings to be considered universal, it is important to understand stars in different chemical environments as well. The results not only reshape predictions of black hole populations but may also adjust our understanding of how the most massive stars in the universe live — and die.

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New Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Speeds Through Solar System

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Astronomers Capture First-Ever Image of a Dead Star That Exploded Twice in Rare Supernova Event

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Astronomers Capture First-Ever Image of a Dead Star That Exploded Twice in Rare Supernova Event

For the first time, a team of astronomers has captured a clear image of a white dwarf star that exploded not just once, but twice, as a Type Ia supernova — a “double-detonation” that scientists hadn’t thought possible until now. The extraordinary observation could revise our long-held notions of how stars die, suggesting that some stars can explode as supernovas without ever crossing the Chandrasekhar limit, the minimum mass normally thought necessary for such an explosion. The astronomers employed the Very Large Telescope’s MUSE instrument to zoom in on the four-century-old supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5, which sits 60,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado, revealing evidence of two separate blasting catastrophes in its construction.

First Visual Proof Shows White Dwarfs Can Explode Twice Without Reaching Chandrasekhar Limit

As the researchers report on July 2 in Nature Astronomy, the team found a distinctive “fingerprint” in the debris of SNR 0509-67.5 in the Large Magellanic Cloud that the models predicted. White dwarfs—which are the dead stage of sun-like stars—usually blow up into Type Ia supernovas after they hit the Chandrasekhar limit by stealing matter from a neighbouring star.

However, this finding shows that the detonation can be launched at an earlier time. The explosion is likely to have a two-step origin, the team argues, with the initial blast being generated when an unstable layer of helium that the star had acquired exploded on its surface; the resulting shock wave then drove a second and main detonation.

“This physical proof of a double-detonation not only helps solve a long-standing mystery of what causes these explosions, but it represents the most visually compelling evidence for this origin.” Priyam Das, University of New South Wales, team leader and author.

Something is happening to Type Ia supernovas, the “standard candles” used to measure cosmic distances, because their brightness doesn’t fluctuate. But they have long mystified scientists with how they explode. Until this discovery, an explosion white dwarf that didn’t surpass the Chandrasekhar limit was only considered in theory.

This fresh visual evidence for the double detonation model further informs our knowledge of stellar evolution and also informs how we should interpret light from distant supernovas. More than its scientific implications, its discovery adds a colourful new page to the story of dying stars — stars that, as it now appears, will not go gently into that night but will light up the sky twice over in fantastic fireworks before vanishing from the cosmos.

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