{"id":115451,"date":"2020-11-04T15:23:19","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T23:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/building-a-star-in-a-smaller-jar"},"modified":"2020-11-04T15:23:19","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T23:23:19","slug":"building-a-star-in-a-smaller-jar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/building-a-star-in-a-smaller-jar","title":{"rendered":"Building a star in a smaller jar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/building-a-star-in-a-smaller-jar.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have gained a better understanding of a promising method for improving the confinement of superhot fusion plasma using magnetic fields. Improved plasma confinement could enable a fusion reactor called a spherical tokamak to be built smaller and less expensively, moving the world closer to reproducing on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars.<\/p>\n<p>The improved confinement is made possible by the so-called enhanced pedestal (EP) H-mode, a variety of the high performance, or H-mode, <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/plasma+state\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">plasma state<\/a> that has been observed for decades in tokamaks around the world. When a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/fusion\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">fusion<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/plasma\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">plasma<\/a> enters H-mode, it requires less heating to get to the superhot temperatures necessary for fusion reactions.<\/p>\n<p>The new understanding reveals some of the underlying mechanics of EP H-mode, a condition that researchers discovered more than a decade ago. Scientists led by physicists at PPPL have now found that the EP H-mode improves upon H-mode in spherical tokamaks by lowering the density of the plasma edge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have gained a better understanding of a promising method for improving the confinement of superhot fusion plasma using magnetic fields. Improved plasma confinement could enable a fusion reactor called a spherical tokamak to be built smaller and less expensively, moving the world [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}