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POPSStar Factory Shows Off Three Kinds of Nebulae The Trifid’s third kind of nebula can be seen in the dark stripes that criss-cross the rest of the image. Called dark nebulae because of their light-obscuring properties, these clouds of gas and dust contain the remnants of previous star births. As higher pressure and temperatures build up inside the streaks of gas, nuclear fusion will lead to the formation of yet more stars
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POPSTransitioning to Omaha. Poker games, not basketball or football, is the oldest, largest and most widely followed gaming competition in the world.
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POPS"Clean energy forever" continues (more at source): Staff at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in central California are confident that some time in 2010, they will create a fusion reaction by focusing 192 intense ultra-violet lasers on to a tiny golden pellet, recreating the energy of the sun for a fraction of a second, thereby paving the way to a carbon-neutral future without global warming or nuclear waste. If all goes to plan, the implications would fairly reflect California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's recent description of the project as "monumental". Fusion, we're told, could be mankind's salvation – but what are the chances of translating theory into practice?
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POPSCold Fusion is Hot again (CBS) 60 Minutes wondered what Richard Garwin would think of the Defense Department's appraisal. "The experiments leave 'no doubt that anomalous, excess heat is produced,'" Pelley told Garwin. Watch the video !
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POPSBBC: "US Giant Laser Experiment Powers Up" "Construction started in 1997 but was fraught with problems and ran into a series of delays that greatly slowed progress into the early 2000s. Progress since then has been much smoother, but compared to initial estimates, NIF is five years behind schedule and almost four times more expensive than budgeted. By August 2007, 96 of the lasers of 192 had been completed and commissioned, with a further 48 of 144 nearing completion. As of Feb 2009, construction was unofficially completed. The first target experiments with all 192 lasers is expected in May 2009, and a dedication ceremony is scheduled for May 29. Ignition is expected by 2010." Its price of over $4 billion and its role in nuclear weapon research have made it a controversial project.
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POPS DC Liberals An Incoherent Bunch Of Eff-Ups
a high tech leap that has any number of offshoots - and it has been cancelled. In this tsunami of government spending, the opportunity to harness nuclear fusion based power has been ended, replaced with dog runs and bike paths in the Spendulus pork buster bill! How did this happen? Here is an overview on the program and its potential: The sun and the stars burn hot in the cold, infinite depths of space because of nuclear fusion, where hydrogen atoms combine to form heavier elements with the release of energy. If mankind could harness this fusion process, we would have nearly unlimited fuel with little or no pollution. Although fusion has been achieved in the hydrogen bomb, researchers have been looking for over 50 years to tame it for electrical power. Taking up the daunting challenge, the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is embarked on a program to reach this goal by using a new technology. http://www.saic.com/news/saicmag/2004-summer/fusion.html
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POPS13 Unsolved scientific puzzles http://www.michaelbrooks.org/ Times Archive: Necessity and free will, 1877 - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/viewArticle.arc?articleId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1877-10-26-04-003&pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1877-10-26-04 Times Archive: Advertisement: The New Homoeopathy, 1914 - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/viewArticle.arc?articleId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1914-07-23-06-012&pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1914-07-23-06
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POPSScientists plan to ignite tiny man-made star From the article: "Scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, nestled among the wine-producing vineyards of central California, will use a laser that concentrates 1,000 times the electric generating power of the United States into a billionth of a second. The result should be an explosion in the 32ft-wide reaction chamber which will produce at least 10 times the amount of energy used to create it. " Roorooo!
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POPSThe entire world- seems utterly still Only very young scientists write this stuff - they still have that open mind that makes them really intelligent;-) http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=57799362&blogID=450873584
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POPSNuclear Fusion Will Become Reality by 2011 In its National Ignition Facility (NIF), LLNL will have a laser capable of heating plasma to the absurdly-high temperatures needed for nuclear fusion. The completion of the device is scheduled for 2009, whereas the first test will begin in 2010. Researchers at the lab are confident that, by 2011, they could obtain sustainable and entirely controllable fusion. The year of 2020 was set as a marker for the construction of the first commercial power plant, to employ the new technology. If their endeavors are successful, then the world could see a major transformation, as far as energy production goes. Having a reliable and perfectly safe source of power will virtually eliminate the need for fossil-fuel power plants, and even wind and solar farms will become obsolete. In order for this to happen, governments worldwide will have to make a huge financial effort, to install these energy-producing plants across their territories.
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POPSNew spaceship force field makes Mars trip possible Now this has been confirmed in the laboratory in the UK using apparatus originally built to work on fusion. By recreating in miniature a tiny piece of the Solar Wind, scientists working in the laboratory were able to confirm that a small "hole" in the Solar Wind is all that would be needed to keep the astronauts safe on their journey to our nearest neighbours. Dr. Ruth Bamford, one of the lead researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, said, "These initial experiments have shown promise and that it may be possible to shield astronauts from deadly space weather".