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Toroidal Solenoid
The toroidal solenoid was an early 1946 design for a fusion power device designed by George Paget Thomson and Moses Blackman of Imperial College London. It proposed to confine a deuterium fuel plasma to a toroidal (donut-shaped) chamber using magnets, and then heating it to fusion temperatures using radio frequency energy in the fashion of a microwave oven. It is notable for being the first such design to be patented, filing a secret patent on 8 May 1946 and receiving it in 1948. A critique by Rudolf Peierls noted several problems with the concept. Over the next few years, Thomson continued to suggest starting an experimental effort to study these issues, but was repeatedly denied as the underlying theory of plasma diffusion was not well developed. When similar concepts were suggested by Peter Thonemann that included a more practical heating arrangement, John Cockcroft began to take the concept more seriously, establishing small study groups at Harwell. Thomson adopted Thonema ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fusion Power
Fusion power is a proposed form of power generation that would generate electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions. In a fusion process, two lighter atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, while releasing energy. Devices designed to harness this energy are known as fusion reactors. Research into fusion reactors began in the 1940s, but as of 2025, no device has reached net power. Fusion processes require fuel, in a state of plasma, and a confined environment with sufficient temperature, pressure, and confinement time. The combination of these parameters that results in a power-producing system is known as the Lawson criterion. In stellar cores the most common fuel is the lightest isotope of hydrogen (Protium (isotope), protium), and gravity provides the conditions needed for fusion energy production. Proposed fusion reactors would use the heavy hydrogen isotopes of deuterium and tritium for DT fusion, for which the Lawson criterion is the easiest to achieve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ZETA (fusion Reactor)
ZETA, short for Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly, was a major experiment in the early history of fusion power research. Based on the Z-pinch, pinch Plasma (physics), plasma confinement technique, and built at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in the United Kingdom, ZETA was larger and more powerful than any fusion machine in the world at that time. Its goal was to produce large numbers of fusion reactions, although it was not large enough to produce net energy. ZETA went into operation in August 1957 and by the end of the month it was giving off bursts of about a million neutrons per pulse. Measurements suggested the fuel was reaching between 1 and 5 million kelvins, a temperature that would produce nuclear fusion reactions, explaining the quantities of neutrons being seen. Early results were leaked to the press in September 1957, and the following January an extensive review was released. Front-page articles in newspapers around the world announced it as a breakthro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lithium
Lithium (from , , ) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard temperature and pressure, standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly reactivity (chemistry), reactive and flammable, and must be stored in vacuum, inert atmosphere, or inert liquid such as purified kerosene or mineral oil. It exhibits a metallic luster (mineralogy), luster. It corrosion, corrodes quickly in air to a dull silvery gray, then black tarnish. It does not occur freely in nature, but occurs mainly as pegmatite, pegmatitic minerals, which were once the main source of lithium. Due to its solubility as an ion, it is present in ocean water and is commonly obtained from brines. Lithium metal is isolated electrolysis, electrolytically from a mixture of lithium chloride and potassium chloride. The Atomic nucleus, nucleus of the lithiu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Particle Accelerator
A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Small accelerators are used for fundamental research in particle physics. Accelerators are also used as synchrotron light sources for the study of condensed matter physics. Smaller particle accelerators are used in a wide variety of applications, including particle therapy for oncology, oncological purposes, Isotopes in medicine, radioisotope production for medical diagnostics, Ion implantation, ion implanters for the manufacturing of Semiconductor, semiconductors, and Accelerator mass spectrometry, accelerator mass spectrometers for measurements of rare isotopes such as radiocarbon. Large accelerators include the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, and the largest accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, operated b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both Atomic physics, atomic and nuclear physics. He has been described as "the father of nuclear physics", and "the greatest experimental physics, experimentalist since Michael Faraday". In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances." He was the first Oceanian Nobel laureate, and the first to perform the awarded work in Canada. Rutherford's discoveries include the concept of radioactive half-life, the radioactive element radon, and the differentiation and naming of Alpha decay, alpha and Beta particle, beta radiation. Together with Thomas Royds, Rutherford is credited with proving that alpha radiation is composed of helium nuclei. In 1911, he theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small atomi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Harteck
Paul Karl Maria Harteck (20 July 190222 January 1985) was an Austrian physical chemist. In 1945 under Operation Epsilon in "the big sweep" throughout Germany, Harteck was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces for suspicion of aiding the Nazis in their nuclear weapons program and he was incarcerated at Farm Hall, an English house fitted with covert electronic listening devices, for six months. Education Harteck studied chemistry at the University of Vienna and the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1921 to 1924. He received his doctorate at the latter under Max Bodenstein in 1926. From 1926 to 1928 he was Arnold Eucken’s teaching assistant at the University of Breslau.Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Paul Harteck. Career From 1928 to 1933, Harteck was a staff scientist at the KWI für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (KWIPC) ( Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Elektrochemistry) located in Dahlem-Berlin, wher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Oliphant
Sir Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant, (8 October 1901 – 14 July 2000) was an Australian physicist and humanitarian who played an important role in the first experimental demonstration of nuclear fusion and in the development of nuclear weapons. Born and raised in Adelaide, South Australia, Oliphant graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1922. He was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship in 1927 on the strength of the research he had done on mercury, and went to England, where he studied under Sir Ernest Rutherford at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. There, he used a particle accelerator to fire heavy hydrogen nuclei (deuterons) at various targets. He discovered the respective nuclei of helium-3 (helions) and of tritium (tritons). He also discovered that when they reacted with each other, the particles that were released had far more energy than they started with. Energy had been liberated from inside the nucleus, and he realised that this was a r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear fusion is a nuclear reaction, reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei combine to form a larger nuclei, nuclei/neutrons, neutron by-products. The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorption of energy. This difference in mass arises as a result of the difference in nuclear binding energy between the atomic nuclei before and after the fusion reaction. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers all active stars, via many Stellar nucleosynthesis, reaction pathways. Fusion processes require an extremely large Lawson criterion, triple product of temperature, density, and confinement time. These conditions occur only in Stellar core, stellar cores, advanced Nuclear weapon design, nuclear weapons, and are approached in List of fusion experiments, fusion power experiments. A nuclear fusion process that produces atomic nuclei lighter than nickel-62 is generally exothermic, due t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Eddington
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour. Around 1920, he foreshadowed the discovery and mechanism of nuclear fusion processes in stars, in his paper "The Internal Constitution of the Stars".The Internal Constitution of the Stars A. S. Eddington The Scientific Monthly Vol. 11, No. 4 (Oct., 1920), pp. 297–303 At that time, the source of stellar energy was a complete mystery; Eddington was the first to correctly speculate that the source was fusion of hydrogen into helium. Eddington wrote a number of articles that announced and explained Einstein's theory of general relativity to the English-speaking world. World War I had severed many lines of scientific communication, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert D'Escourt Atkinson
Robert d'Escourt Atkinson (11 April 1898 – 28 October 1982) was a British astronomer, physicist and inventor. Biography Robert d'Escourt Atkinson was born in Rhayader, Wales, on April 11, 1898. He went to Manchester Grammar School and received a degree in physics from Oxford in 1922. He worked in the Clarendon Laboratory and then went to Göttingen, where he received a Ph.D. in physics in 1928."Atkinson, Robert d’Escourt", by Wayne Orchiston, pp. 68-69 in ''The Biographical Dictionary of Astronomers'', eds. Thomas Hockey et al., Springer: New York, 2007, , . After teaching physics at the Berlin Technische Hochscule for a year, Atkinson was appointed Assistant Professor of Physics at Rutgers University. He taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey from 1929 to 1937, when he became Chief Assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. During World War II, Atkinson was called away from this position to do anti-magnetic mine work. In 1944, he was lent out to the Ballistic Res ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritz Houtermans
Friedrich Georg "Fritz" Houtermans (January 22, 1903 – March 1, 1966) was a Dutch-Austrian-German atomic and nuclear physicist and Communist born in Zoppot (now Sopot) near Danzig (now Gdańsk), West Prussia to a Dutch father, who was a wealthy banker. He was brought up in Vienna, where he was educated, and moved to Göttingen when he was 18 to study. It was in Göttingen where he obtained his Ph.D. under James Franck. Education Houtermans began his studies at the University of Göttingen in 1921, and he received his doctorate under James Franck in 1927, the same year Robert Oppenheimer received his doctorate under Max Born. He completed his Habilitation under Gustav Hertz at Technische Universität Berlin, in 1932. Hertz and Franck were Nobel Prize laureates; they shared the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics.Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Houtermans. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantum Tunnelling
In physics, quantum tunnelling, barrier penetration, or simply tunnelling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an object such as an electron or atom passes through a potential energy barrier that, according to classical mechanics, should not be passable due to the object not having sufficient energy to pass or surmount the barrier. Tunneling is a consequence of the wave nature of matter, where the quantum wave function describes the state of a particle or other physical system, and wave equations such as the Schrödinger equation describe their behavior. The probability of transmission of a wave packet through a barrier decreases exponentially with the barrier height, the barrier width, and the tunneling particle's mass, so tunneling is seen most prominently in low-mass particles such as electrons or protons tunneling through microscopically narrow barriers. Tunneling is readily detectable with barriers of thickness about 1–3 nm or smaller for electrons, and abou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
