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A New Way to View Shockwaves Could Boost Fusion Research

At the heart of our sun, fusion is unfolding. As hydrogen atoms merge to form helium, they emit energy, producing the heat and light that reach us here on Earth. Inspired by our nearby star, researchers want to create fusion closer to home. If they can crack the engineering challenges underlying the process, they would create an abundant new source of power to eclipse all others.

One of those challenges is understanding what happens at the smallest scales during fusion reactions so that researchers can better control the process. In one of the two main kinds of fusion, inertial confinement fusion (ICF), researchers bombard a fuel-filled capsule with lasers to create shockwaves and heat and compress the target, kicking off fusion. That means lots of complex interactions that scientists haven’t been able to get a good look at — until now.

A team of researchers used a new approach at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) to watch how a shockwave moved through water in extreme detail, making a never-before-seen movie of how the material compressed and how the electric and magnetic fields evolved. They were intrigued to discover that water provided a good analog for what happens when a laser strikes an ICF target. Scientists captured the process using both X-rays and an electron beam, a unique dual view known as “multi-messenger” imaging.

The Space Habitat Diaspora — Humanity Spreads Without Planets

Humanity may not colonize planets—we may build our own worlds. Explore how rotating space habitats could spread across the Solar System and beyond, forming a vast diaspora of artificial worlds that reshape civilization and interstellar expansion.

Get Nebula using my link for 50% off an annual subscription: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthur.
Watch my exclusive video Settling Saturn’s Rings: https://nebula.tv/videos/isaacarthur–… SFIA Merchandise: https://isaac-arthur-shop.fourthwall… 🌐 Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net ❤️ Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur ⭐ Support us on Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/isaac-a… 👥 Facebook Group: / 1,583,992,725,237,264 📣 Reddit Community: / isaacarthur 🐦 Follow on Twitter / X: / isaac_a_arthur 💬 SFIA Discord Server: / discord Credits: The Space Habitat Diaspora – Humanity Spreads Without Planets Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur Graphics from Bryan Versteeg, Jeremy Jozwik, Sergio Botero, Udo Schroeter Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images 0:00 Intro — Rethinking What a World Can Be 2:37 Why Habitats Win on Physics, Engineering… and Scalability 10:13 The Birth of a Habitat Civilization 14:54 Nebula 15:54 Life Without Planets: Cultures That Grow in Steel Valleys 18:59 Resilience: Fragile Shells, Immortal Civilizations 21:37 The True Diaspora: Leaving the Solar System.

🛒 SFIA Merchandise: https://isaac-arthur-shop.fourthwall…
🌐 Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net.
❤️ Support us on Patreon: / isaacarthur.
⭐ Support us on Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/isaac-a…
👥 Facebook Group: / 1583992725237264
📣 Reddit Community: / isaacarthur.
🐦 Follow on Twitter / X: / isaac_a_arthur.
💬 SFIA Discord Server: / discord.
Credits:
The Space Habitat Diaspora – Humanity Spreads Without Planets.
Written, Produced & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur.
Graphics from Bryan Versteeg, Jeremy Jozwik, Sergio Botero, Udo Schroeter.
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images.

0:00 Intro — Rethinking What a World Can Be.
2:37 Why Habitats Win on Physics, Engineering… and Scalability.
10:13 The Birth of a Habitat Civilization.
14:54 Nebula.
15:54 Life Without Planets: Cultures That Grow in Steel Valleys.
18:59 Resilience: Fragile Shells, Immortal Civilizations.
21:37 The True Diaspora: Leaving the Solar System.

Room-temperature vibrations could transform how industry makes graphene

Researchers have demonstrated a new technique for creating 2D materials that runs at room temperature and increases production rates tenfold over current methods, without using toxic solvents. Scientists led by Dr. Jason Stafford from the Department of Mechanical Engineering demonstrated the method can produce nanosheets of conductors, semiconductors and insulators, which are the building blocks of all digital devices and technologies produced today. The research is published in the journal Small.

Dr. Stafford said, “Our work shows a new way of making 2D materials that overcomes the production capacity issues of current methods, while simultaneously embedding sustainable manufacturing practices.”

2D materials are ultra-thin materials that consist of a few layers of atoms. They have unique electronic, thermal, and mechanical properties that differ significantly from their 3D counterparts, and are ideal components for next-generation electronics, energy and sensor technologies.

At just four nanometers thick, this metal starts behaving in a way physicists did not expect

Researchers in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have discovered a powerful new way to control the electronic behavior of a metal—by manipulating the atomic properties of materials where they meet. The study, published in Nature Communications, demonstrates that interfacial polarization can tune the surface work function of metallic ruthenium dioxide (RuO2) by more than 1 electron volt (eV)—a tiny amount of energy—simply by adjusting film thickness at the nanometer scale.

“We often think of polarization as something that belongs to insulators or ferroelectrics—not metals,” said Bharat Jalan, professor and Shell Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. “Our work shows that, through careful interface design, you can stabilize polarization in a metallic system and use it as a knob to tune electronic properties. This opens an entirely new way of thinking about controlling metals.”

This specific change is most powerful when the metal layer is about 4 nanometers thick—roughly the width of a single strand of DNA. At this precise size, the metal shifts from being “stretched” by the material underneath it to a more “relaxed” state. This transition proves that the physical way atoms are packed together has a direct, measurable impact on how the metal handles electricity.

Specially designed material combines light and electricity to remove PFAS from water without harmful byproducts

Researchers at Clarkson University have reported a breakthrough in tackling per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a group of widely used “forever chemicals” that are difficult to remove from water and have raised growing environmental and public health concerns. The study, published in Nature Communications, was led by Associate Professor Yang Yang and his team in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. It presents a new method for breaking down PFAS that could improve the treatment of contaminated water in real-world conditions.

A faster, greener method to recycle lithium-ion batteries can also ease supply chain issues

As global demand for lithium-ion batteries continues to surge, a team of Rice University researchers has developed a faster, more energy-efficient way to recover critical minerals from spent batteries, potentially easing supply chain pressures and reducing environmental harm.

In a new study published in Small, researchers from Rice’s Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering introduce a class of water-based solutions that can extract valuable metals from battery waste in minutes rather than hours. The work centers on aqueous solutions of amino chlorides, which mimic the performance of commonly studied green solvents like deep eutectics, while avoiding their key limitations.

“Traditional recycling methods often rely on harsh acids or slow, energy-intensive processes,” said the study’s first author, Simon M. King, a sophomore studying chemical and biomolecular engineering who completed this work as a summer research fellow at the Rice Advanced Materials Institute. “What we’ve shown is that you can achieve rapid, high-efficiency metal recovery using a much simpler, water-based system.”

Bing Brunton on Connecting the Connectome to the Body | Mindscape 352

Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/.…

The connectome is the wiring diagram of a brain, a big matrix that tells us what neurons talk to what other neurons. Understanding it is an important step to understanding how brains work, but a long way from the final answer. A big next step is understanding how neuronal circuits connect to and guide bodily behavior. Very recent work on mapping the fruit-fly connectome has brought us closer to that goal. I talk with neuroscientist Bing Brunton about the connectome, how we can study it to understand bodily motion in flies and other creatures, and where it’s all taking us.

Bing Wen Brunton received her Ph.D. in neuroscience from Princeton University… She is currently a Professor of Biology and the Richard & Joan Komen University Chair at the University of Washington, with affiliations at the eScience Institute for Data Science, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and the Department of Applied Mathematics.

Mindscape Podcast playlist: • Mindscape Podcast
Sean Carroll channel: / seancarroll.

Hydraulic brain: Body motion linked to fluid movement in the brain

The brain is more mechanically connected to the body than previously appreciated, scientists report in Nature Neuroscience. Through a study using mice and simulations, the team found a potential biological mechanism underlying why exercise is thought to benefit brain health: abdominal contractions compress blood vessels connected to the spinal cord and the brain, enabling the organ to gently move within the skull. This swaying facilitates the surrounding cerebrospinal fluid to flow over the brain, potentially washing away neural waste that could cause problems for brain function.

According to Patrick Drew, professor of engineering science and mechanics, of neurosurgery, of biology and of biomedical engineering at Penn State, the work builds on previous studies detailing how sleep and neuron loss can influence how and when cerebrospinal fluid flushes through the brain.

“Our research explains how just moving around might serve as an important physiological mechanism promoting brain health,” said Drew, corresponding author on the paper. “In this study, we found that when the abdominal muscles contract, they push blood from the abdomen into the spinal cord, just like in a hydraulic system, applying pressure to the brain and making it move.

Light-powered spaceships could get to our nearest star in 20 years. Fiction? Scientists say it could become fact

That would mean generations upon generations of human lifetimes, all lived out on board a rocket ship travelling across space, in the hope of a comfortable utopia waiting for us when we arrive.

Now, a team of researchers say they’ve demonstrated a form of light-driven propulsion that could one day get us to Alpha Centauri in 20 years.

A team of researchers at the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University say they’ve demonstrated lasers can be used to lift and steer objects without physical contact.

How electron structure affects light responses in moiré materials

In materials science, if you can understand the “texture” of a material—how its internal patterns form and shift—you can begin to design how it behaves. That’s the focus of the work of Zhenglu Li, assistant professor in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Li’s recently published paper in PNAS, titled “Moiré excitons in generalized Wigner crystals,” demonstrates that the way electrons organize themselves inside a material determines how that material responds to light—and how this organization can be engineered.

“Moiré” is a word that will be familiar to anyone who follows fashion. In the context of textiles, it refers to a larger-scale interference pattern that appears when two repeating patterns are slightly misaligned. Imagine brushing a swatch of velvet in different directions; the material reveals different properties depending on how it is ruffled.

Likewise, in the context of nanoscale materials science, an independent, shimmering or wavelike pattern is formed when two overlapping atomically thin layers are overlaid at an acute angle. The new pattern, moiré superlattice, changes how electrons move, which can give the material unusual properties.

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