News Archive
The sun defies conventional scientific understanding. Its upper atmosphere, known as the corona, is many millions of degrees hotter than its surface. Astrophysicists are keen to learn why the corona is so hot, and scientists at the U.S.
Major developments in the use of lithium to improve the performance of fusion plasmas — the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei that fuels fusion reactions — have earned a trio of physicists the 2018 outstanding research awards from the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded major computer hours on three leading supercomputers, including the world’s fastest, to a team led by C.S. Chang of the DOE’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s (PPPL) 2019 Ronald E. Hatcher Science on Saturday Lecture Series gets started Jan. 12 with a multitude of lectures on hot science topics that will warm the hearts and stimulate the minds of science fans of all ages.
As on Earth, so in space.
“It’s just all been fun, and this is the most fun job I’ve ever had,” Steve Cowley says of his much-decorated career and his new position, which he assumed July 1, as the seventh director of the U.S.
Members of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s (PPPL) Science Education staff were busy educating students and the public about fusion energy during the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Plasma Physics Conference in Portland, Oregon, Nov. 5 to 8.
More than 135 researchers and students from the U.S.
Contrary to what many people believe, outer space is not empty. In addition to an electrically charged soup of ions and electrons known as plasma, space is permeated by magnetic fields with a wide range of strengths.
Queen Elizabeth knighted Steve Cowley, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), in an investiture ceremony on Oct. 11 at Buckingham Palace.
Magnetic forces ripple throughout the universe, from the fields surrounding planets to the gasses filling galaxies, and can be launched by a phenomenon called the Biermann battery effect. Now scientists at the U.S.
Just as fire produces ash, the combining of light elements in fusion reactions can produce material that eventually interferes with those same reactions. Now, scientists at the U.S.
Rich Hawryluk, an internationally-known physicist who served as interim director of the U.S.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) on Oct. 5 presented the U.S.
PPPL has received more than $200,000 to develop superconducting magnet technology that could be used for space propulsion as part of a NASA grant to a company that has licensed technology developed by PPPL physicist Sam Cohen
Physicist Sam Cohen of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and local company Princeton Satellite Systems have won a Federal Laboratory Consortium award for their joint efforts on a rocket propulsion technology at the Sept.
The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has won a national award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recognizing the Laboratory’s leadership and continuous improvement in buying sustainable products.
Shannon Swilley Greco, a program leader in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s Science Education Office, is the vice chair elect of the American Physical Society's Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public (FOEP).
Magnetic reconnection, the snapping apart and violent reconnection of magnetic field lines in plasma — the state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei — occurs throughout the universe and can whip up space storms that disrupt cell phone service and knock out power grids.
Companies dealing with liquids ranging from wastewater to molten metals could benefit from a prize-winning device developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Princeton University.
Caoxiang Zhu, a postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has won the 2018 CAI Shidong Award for plasma physics in China.
Nat Fisch, associate director for academic affairs at the U.S.
If you think plasma thrusters are found only in science fiction, think again. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have been uncovering the physics behind these high-tech engines, which maneuver satellites in space.
The story of Joel Hosea’s career is the story of PPPL. The Laboratory, founded as Project Matterhorn in 1951, had only been called the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) for seven years when Hosea began work there in 1968.
Fusion, the power that drives the sun and stars, produces massive amounts of energy.
Graduate physics students from across the country recently descended on the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) for the first PPPL Graduate Summer School — a series of lectures the week of Aug.
Staff at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory donated more than two dozen backpacks and dozens of notebooks, binders, pens, pencils and crayons during school supply drive for local school children through the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.
To capture and control the process of fusion that powers the sun and stars in facilities on Earth called tokamaks, scientists must confront disruptions that can halt the reactions and damage the doughnut-shaped devices. Now an artificial intelligence system under development at the U.S.
They gathered in the lobby of the U.S.
Before scientists can capture and recreate the fusion process that powers the sun and stars to produce virtually limitless energy on Earth, they must first learn to control the hot plasma gas that fuels fusion reactions.
While most teenagers might have been spending the hot summer months at the beach, a dedicated crew of high school students devoted the past three months conducting physics and engineering research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).
Inside your home and office, low-voltage alternating current (AC) powers the lights, computers and electronic devices for everyday use.
The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s (PPPL) mission of doing research to develop fusion as a viable source of energy is vital to the future of the planet, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said during an Aug. 9 visit.
The sixth Annual Theory and Simulation of Disruptions Workshop at the U.S.
Scientists led by Stephen Jardin, principal research physicist and head of the Computational Plasma Physics Group at the U.S.
Sawtooth swings — up-and-down ripples found in everything from stock prices on Wall Street to ocean waves — occur periodically in the temperature and density of the plasma that fuels fusion reactions in doughnut-shaped facilities called tokamaks.
Seth Davidovits, a 2017 graduate of the Program in Plasma Physics in the Princeton University Department of Astrophysical Sciences, has won the 2018 Marshall N. Rosenbluth Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award presented by the American Physical Society (APS).
When Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion facility set a world record for stellarators recently, a finely tuned instrument built and delivered by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) proved the achievement.
From analyzing solar flares to pursuing “a star in a jar” to produce virtually limitless electric power, scientists at the U.S.
10 Questions for Steven Cowley, New Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
PPPL launched about 60 student interns into a summer of research by hosting an intensive one-week course in plasma physics the week of June 11.
Physicists Dr. Nate Ferraro and Dr. Sam Lazerson of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have each won 2018 Early Career Research Program awards sponsored by the DOE Office of Science.
Steven Cowley, newly named director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) effective July 1, has received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth “for services to science and the development of nuclear fusion.”
Magnetic islands, bubble-like structures that form in fusion plasmas, can grow and disrupt the plasmas and damage the doughnut-shaped tokamak facilities that house fusion reactions. Recent research at the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has won two awards from the U.S.
PRINCETON, New Jersey (June 6, 2018) – The 23rd International Conference on Plasma Surface Interactions in Controlled Fusion Devices – the preeminent biennial research conference in this field – begins on June 17 and continues for six days.
Any solid surface immersed within a plasma, including those in satellite engines and fusion reactors, is surrounded by a layer of electrical charge that determines the interaction between the surface and the plasma.
New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy came to the Young Women’s Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) organized by the U.S.
By Office of Communications, Princeton University
A team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has won a DOE Office of Science award to develop new X-ray diagnostics for WEST — the Tungsten (W) Environment in Steady-state Tokamak — in Cadarache, France.
Hundreds of people visited the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory’s (PPPL) booth at the Communiversity ArtsFest on Sunday, April 29, where visitors enjoyed the hair-raising Van de Graaff generator, children giggled over marshmallow Peeps bunnies expanding in the vacuum demonstration and physicis
Scientists seeking to bring fusion — the power that drives the sun and stars — down to Earth must first make the state of matter called plasma superhot enough to sustain fusion reactions. That calls for heating the plasma to many times the temperature of the core of the sun.
Physicist William Tang has won a highly competitive $100,000 Global Impact Award from NVIDIA Corp., the leading producer of graphics processing units (GPUs) for carrying out artificial intelligence (AI) computing.
A team of Princeton University inventors won first place at the 13th Annual Innovation Forum for its invention of a unique type of device called a “flowmeter.” The instrument was developed at PPPL and offers a simple, inexpensive, and contactless method of measuring fluids in industria
A team of U.S. and German scientists has used a system of large magnetic “trim” coils designed and delivered by the U.S.
Halo currents — electrical currents that flow from the hot, charged plasma that fuels fusion reactions and strike the walls of fusion facilities — could damage the walls of fusion devices like ITER, the international experiment under construction in France to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion
Birds do it and so do doughnut-shaped fusion facilities called “tokamaks.” But tokamak chirping— a rapidly changing frequency wave that can be far above what the human ear can detect — is hardly welcome to researchers who seek to bring the fusion that powers the sun and stars to Earth.
A millisecond burst of light on a computer monitor signaled production of the first plasma in a powerful new device for advancing research into magnetic reconnection — a critical but little understood process that occurs throughout the universe.
A key challenge in fusion research is maintaining the stability of the hot, charged plasma that fuels fusion reactions inside doughnut-shaped facilities called “tokamaks.” Physicists at the U.S.
Nanoparticles, superstrong and flexible structures such as carbon nanotubes that are measured in billionths of a meter — a diameter thousands of times thinner than a human hair — are used in everything from microchips to sporting goods to pharmaceutical products.
As the final competitions took place at the Olympics in South Korea, a battle of the brains was taking place at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) on Feb.
Scientists at the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science, the largest U.S.
Clayton Myers, a 2015 graduate of the Program in Plasma Physics in the Princeton Department of Astrophysical Sciences who did his research at the U.S.
A key goal for ITER, the international fusion device under construction in France, will be to produce 10 times more power than goes into it to heat the hot, charged plasma that sustains fusion reactions.
Lithium — it’s not just for batteries: The powdered metal can reduce instabilities in fusion plasmas
You may be most familiar with the element lithium as an integral component of your smart phone’s battery, but the element also plays a role in the development of clean fusion energy.
David Johnson and Charles Skinner, principal research physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), have been appointed to three-year terms as ITER Scientist Fellows.
Elena Belova, a principal research physicist in the Theory Department at the U.S.
Throughout 2017 researchers at the U.S.
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory managed by Princeton University.
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