The LDX - Levitating dipole experiment.
It sounds pretty crazy: a levitating wire of current as a fusion reactor! It turns out not to be only a MIT's grad-student thesis project: its simplistic set-up might prove an elegant solution.
I reviewed a book (Friedberg- Plasma physics and Fusion Energy)trying to understand it and it is pretty simple:
Their major problems ahead are that they have to use D-D or D-He3 reactions because they have to keep their nice and superconducting loop of wire cool to run large enough currents to ever achieve decent fusion conditions.
It's a cool experiment nonetheless in the light that nobody has built any experiment that big (5-m diameter in MIT) a loop of wire and levitated it to fully study astrophysical plasmas like that before.
I hope transport is not a mess.
It also
It sounds pretty crazy: a levitating wire of current as a fusion reactor! It turns out not to be only a MIT's grad-student thesis project: its simplistic set-up might prove an elegant solution.
I reviewed a book (Friedberg- Plasma physics and Fusion Energy)trying to understand it and it is pretty simple:
- Get a wire into the shape of a cube
- Put it inside a huge spherical vaccum chamber
- Get some nicely shaped B fields on top and bottom of chamber to levitate your loop of wire
- Get some gas going (D or He3 that is... methane fusion has pretty small CS)
- Heat your plasma with microwaves
Their major problems ahead are that they have to use D-D or D-He3 reactions because they have to keep their nice and superconducting loop of wire cool to run large enough currents to ever achieve decent fusion conditions.
It's a cool experiment nonetheless in the light that nobody has built any experiment that big (5-m diameter in MIT) a loop of wire and levitated it to fully study astrophysical plasmas like that before.
I hope transport is not a mess.
It also
