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Tests on a machine that mimics a planet’s magnetic field show that it may offer an ‘alternative path’ to taming nuclear fusion for power generation.
A new experiment that reproduces the magnetic fields of the Earth and other planets has yielded its first significant results. The findings confirm that its unique approach has some potential to be developed as a new way of creating a power-producing plant based on nuclear fusion
The results, published this week in the journal Nature Physics, confirm the counter-intuitive prediction that inside the device’s magnetic chamber, random turbulence causes the plasma to become more densely concentrated — a crucial step to getting atoms to fuse together — instead of becoming more spread out, as usually happens with turbulence. This “turbulent pinching” of the plasma has been observed in the way plasmas in space interact with the Earth’s and Jupiter’s magnetic fields, but has never before been recreated in the laboratory.
Originally posted by sunny_2008ny
With this fusion space travel is likely to become more longer and more distant because we could have fusion reactors in space, and that too with the earth's magnetic field.
SOurce: web.mit.edu...
Why would space travel take longer?
I know that this may seem to be a silly question to some, but I just want to know.