{"id":76925,"date":"2018-03-15T08:23:12","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T15:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/nanowire-zapping-lasers-unlock-micro-scale-nuclear-fusion-efficiency-record"},"modified":"2018-03-15T08:23:12","modified_gmt":"2018-03-15T15:23:12","slug":"nanowire-zapping-lasers-unlock-micro-scale-nuclear-fusion-efficiency-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/nanowire-zapping-lasers-unlock-micro-scale-nuclear-fusion-efficiency-record","title":{"rendered":"Nanowire-zapping lasers unlock micro-scale nuclear fusion efficiency record"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nanowire-zapping-lasers-unlock-micro-scale-nuclear-fusion-efficiency-record.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at Colorado State University (CSU) have broken the efficiency record for nuclear fusion on the micro-scale. Using an ultra-fast, high-powered tabletop laser, the team\u2019s results were about 500 times more efficient than previous experiments. The key to that success is the target material: instead of a flat piece of polymer, the researchers blasted arrays of nanowires to create incredibly hot, dense plasmas.<\/p>\n<p>We have <a href=\"https:\/\/newatlas.com\/fusion-breakthrough\/30814\/\" target=\"_blank\">nuclear fusion<\/a> to thank for our very existence \u2013 without it, the Sun wouldn\u2019t have fired up in the first place. Inside that inferno, hydrogen atoms are crushed and through a series of chain reactions, eventually form helium. In the process, tremendous amounts of energy are released. Theoretically, if we can harness that phenomenon we could produce an essentially unlimited supply of clean energy, and although <a href=\"https:\/\/newatlas.com\/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-runaway-electrons\/50158\/\" target=\"_blank\">breakthroughs<\/a> have been made in recent years, nuclear fusion energy remains tantalizingly out of reach.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/newatlas.com\/laser-nanowire-micro-nuclear-fusion\/53815\/\">https:\/\/newatlas.com\/laser-nanowire-micro-nuclear-fusion\/53815\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at Colorado State University (CSU) have broken the efficiency record for nuclear fusion on the micro-scale. Using an ultra-fast, high-powered tabletop laser, the team\u2019s results were about 500 times more efficient than previous experiments. The key to that success is the target material: instead of a flat piece of polymer, the researchers blasted arrays [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,873,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nanotechnology","category-nuclear-energy","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76925","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\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}