{"id":95284,"date":"2019-08-25T20:23:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T03:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/laser-produced-uranium-plasma-evolves-into-more-complex-species"},"modified":"2019-08-25T20:23:17","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T03:23:17","slug":"laser-produced-uranium-plasma-evolves-into-more-complex-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/laser-produced-uranium-plasma-evolves-into-more-complex-species","title":{"rendered":"Laser-produced uranium plasma evolves into more complex species"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/laser-produced-uranium-plasma-evolves-into-more-complex-species3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When energy is added to uranium under pressure, it creates a shock wave, and even a tiny sample will be vaporized like a small explosion. By using smaller, controlled explosions, physicists can test on a microscale in a safe laboratory environment what could previously be tested only in larger, more dangerous experiments with bombs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn our case, it\u2019s the laser depositing energy into a target, but you get the same formation and time-dependent evolution of <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/uranium\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">uranium<\/a> plasma,\u201d author Patrick Skrodzki said. \u201cWith these small-scale explosions in the lab, we can understand similar physics.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a recent experiment, scientists working with Skrodzki used a laser to ablate atomic uranium, stealing its electrons until it ionized and turned to plasma, all while recording <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/chemical+reactions\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">chemical reactions<\/a> as the plasma cooled, oxidized and formed species of more complex uranium. Their work puts uranium species and the reaction pathways between them onto a map of space and time to discover how many nanoseconds they take to form and at which part of the plasma\u2019s evolution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When energy is added to uranium under pressure, it creates a shock wave, and even a tiny sample will be vaporized like a small explosion. By using smaller, controlled explosions, physicists can test on a microscale in a safe laboratory environment what could previously be tested only in larger, more dangerous experiments with bombs. \u201cIn [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[385,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95284","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}