Word: hydrogen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...members of a vast chemical family known as hydrocarbons, compounds composed of hydrogen and carbon entwined in complex and varying arrays. As it turns out, living creatures contain considerable stores of both elements. Putting two and two together, geologists have long assumed that when living organisms die, heat, light and bacteria begin to degrade the constituent compounds. That organic material then collects in sedimentary layers in the sea and is buried progressively deeper. After millions of years, pressure and temperature convert the debris into fossil fuels. Yet little hard evidence supports this conventional wisdom. Declares Tore Lindbo, Swedish Power Board...
After the giant laser is dedicated in a ceremony at Livermore this week, scientists will employ its intense beam of light in an attempt to weld the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, releasing bursts of energy at temperatures exceeding those at the center of the sun. Should they succeed in harnessing nuclear fusion, they could point the way toward a limitless supply of cheap, clean power. "Once we crack the problem of fusion," says John Emmett, associate director for lasers at Livermore, "we have an assured source of energy for as long as you want to think about it. It will...
...awesome might of fusion energy can be explained by Albert Einstein's famed equation, E = mc 2. When two nuclei from hydrogen atoms are shoved together to become a single, heavier helium nucleus, a tiny bit of their individual masses is converted into a tremendous amount of energy. In weapons, that energy is uncontrolled and destructive. To channel it into a usable form, scientists must be able to control the fusion reac- tion and confine it to a chamber, which requires surmounting some formidable physical constraints. The hydrogen nuclei must be crushed together with enough force to overcome their mutually...
...tubes terminate inside an airless 16-ft.-wide aluminum chamber, each entering it from a different direction. Inside, the focusing lenses are arrayed around a pellet of deuterium and tritium, two heavier varieties of hydrogen atoms. Scientists hope that when the beams simultaneously hit the pellet, which is smaller than a grain of sand, the temperature of the pellet's outer surface will be raised to 100 million degrees, causing it to vaporize explosively. Just as a rocket is pushed forward by its tail exhaust, the vaporizing surface would exert a force inward, compressing the pellet to a density...
Chemical lasers, utilizing the reaction of gases such as hydrogen and fluorine, are the most powerful lasers now in use. But a missile-killing laser beam might have to be 10 million times as powerful as the one that the Air Force is now using in antisatellite weapons tests. Also, because its long wavelength somewhat spreads out its focus, a chemical laser beam might have to be held on precisely the same spot on a missile's skin for as long as seven seconds; during that time the missile might rise 20 miles. Because a ground- based laser could...