Durham University scientists have completed one of the largest quality verification programs ever carried out on superconducting materials, helping to ensure the success of the world’s biggest fusion energy experiment ITER.
Their findings, published in Superconductor Science and Technology, shed light not only on the quality of the wires themselves but also on how to best test them, providing crucial knowledge for scientists to make fusion energy a reality.
Fusion (the process that powers the sun) has long been described as the holy grail of clean energy. It offers the promise of a virtually limitless power source with no carbon emissions and minimal radioactive waste.
Today, the absolute heart of particle physics is located in Geneva, Switzerland at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. This instrument’s unmatched size, power, and precision make it the ultimate tool for exploring high-energy particle physics. However, one tool can’t do everything, and even immensely useful ones like the LHC sometimes need a helping hand.
That’s where Brookhaven National Laboratory’s (BNL) Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) comes in. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Energy approved an upgrade to the Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction eXperiment (PHENIX)—an instrument originally designed to explore the components of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) that formed one millionth of a second after the Big Bang. According to Edward O’Brien (a physicist from BNL), the idea behind this super PHENIX, or sPHENIX, was to “provide physics results which focused on jets and heavy flavor [of quarks] that complemented and overlapped with the Heavy Ion physics results being generated by the experiments at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.”
Dutch fusion researchers Kevin Verhaegh (TU/e) and Bob Kool (Dutch research institute DIFFER and TU/e) headed the work with a collaboration between the UKAEA and European EUROfusion research teams.
At any given moment, trillions of particles called neutrinos are streaming through our bodies and every material in our surroundings, without noticeable effect. Smaller than electrons and lighter than photons, these ghostly entities are the most abundant particles with mass in the universe.
The exact mass of a neutrino is a big unknown. The particle is so small, and interacts so rarely with matter, that it is incredibly difficult to measure. Scientists attempt to do so by harnessing nuclear reactors and massive particle accelerators to generate unstable atoms, which then decay into various byproducts including neutrinos. In this way, physicists can manufacture beams of neutrinos that they can probe for properties including the particle’s mass.
Now MIT physicists propose a much more compact and efficient way to generate neutrinos that could be realized in a tabletop experiment.
A debate/discussion on ASI (artificial superintelligence) between Foresight Senior Fellow Mark S. Miller and MIRI founder Eliezer Yudkowsky. Sharing similar long-term goals, they nevertheless reach opposite conclusions on best strategy.
“What are the best strategies for addressing risks from artificial superintelligence? In this 4-hour conversation, Eliezer Yudkowsky and Mark Miller discuss their cruxes for disagreement. While Eliezer advocates an international treaty that bans anyone from building it, Mark argues that such a pause would make an ASI singleton more likely – which he sees as the greatest danger.”
What are the best strategies for addressing extreme risks from artificial superintelligence? In this 4-hour conversation, decision theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky and computer scientist Mark Miller discuss their cruxes for disagreement.
They examine the future of AI, existential risk, and whether alignment is even possible. Topics include AI risk scenarios, coalition dynamics, secure systems like seL4, hardware exploits like Rowhammer, molecular engineering with AlphaFold, and historical analogies like nuclear arms control. They explore superintelligence governance, multipolar vs singleton futures, and the philosophical challenges of trust, verification, and control in a post-AGI world.
Moderated by Christine Peterson, the discussion seeks the least risky strategy for reaching a preferred state amid superintelligent AI risks. Yudkowsky warns of catastrophic outcomes if AGI is not controlled, while Miller advocates decentralizing power and preserving human institutions as AI evolves.
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), has achieved a breakthrough in fusion research by
An experiment carried out at CERN’s ISOLDE facility has determined the western shore of a small island of atomic nuclei, where conventional nuclear rules break down.
The atomic nucleus was discovered over a century ago, yet many questions remain about the force that keeps its constituent protons and neutrons together and the way in which these particles pack themselves together within it.
In the classic nuclear shell model, protons and neutrons arrange themselves in shells of increasing energy, and completely filled outer shells of protons or neutrons result in particularly stable “magic” nuclei. But the model only works for nuclei with the right mix of protons and neutrons. Get the wrong mix and the model breaks down.
The final section of what scientists and engineers say will be the largest and most powerful pulsed, superconducting magnet in the world has been completed at the Poway campus of San Diego-based General Atomics.
The 270,000-pound module is poised for shipment to France, where it will join six other identical sections at the ITER project—an ambitious international effort aimed at determining whether the so-far-untapped potential of nuclear fusion as an energy source can be practical or not.
“This is a momentous achievement,” General Atomics Chief Executive Officer Neal Blue said Thursday during a news conference at the company’s Magnet Technologies Center in Poway.
Deep within the rugged hills of Inner Mongolia, Chinese scientists have unearthed something that could reshape the global energy landscape. In the Bayan Obo mining region, researchers have identified an estimated one million tons of thorium —a rare-earth element that could revolutionize nuclear power.
