in our continuing look at what 2012 might have in store for us science-wise, we travel to the National Ignition Facility in California, where researchers could be on the brink of a new era in clean energy: nuclear fusion

In the middle of the night, as the rest of America sleeps, a small group of physicists in California stand in a hushed control room. The clock steadily counts down towards zero and then, in a fraction of a second, everything happens at once. A bank of powerful lasers unleash their beams, which travel through a series of tunnels at the speed of light. Bouncing back and forth, they pick up more and more energy before converging on a central sphere. Inside, all 192 beams meet, focussing their power on a tiny capsule no bigger than a peppercorn. It’s all over in a matter of seconds, but in the heat and pressure at the centre of that sphere, researchers at the National Ignition Facility believe they can see the future: a world powered by the ultimate clean energy source. Their goal is to show that nuclear fusion – the same ultra-efficient force which powers our sun – can be initiated with laser beams, and they’re inching closer and closer to that day. In late 2010, we caught up with Director Mike Dunne to talk about the greatest prize in physics…

Why is fusion power so exciting?
The reason people have spent decades and billions of dollars on fusion research is that the prize is really quite compelling. There are no greenhouse gas emissions, it’s inherently safe as there’s only a tiny amount of fuel being used at any given time, but that tiny amount can deliver the same output as a very large coal station or a big nuclear power station. But unlike nuclear there’s no enrichment, no reprocessing and no high-level waste – so you don’t have any of those proliferation concerns.

You were working in the UK until quite recently – why did you move to the National Ignition Facility? Are they on to something?

I’ve spent the last five years assembling a European consortium to develop this technology and make it a reality, and having worked through that, you get to realise what it will take to convert the dream into reality. That’s really what drew me here: this is the one place in the world that has the technology systems, the lasers big enough and operational enough to demonstrate once and for all that the science works. This is a concept that was born actually just three or four days after the laser itself was demonstrated. There was a guy here, quite a young researcher at the time, who had the idea of “hey you could actually make use of this to heat up a little bit of fuel to such a high temperature that you get fusion”.

Was he right?
With a laser, you can focus energy down to a really small spot – smaller than the width of a hair – and focus it in really short periods of time, we’re talking billionths or even trillionths of a second. When you do that you get very high power, very extreme conditions. And it turns out it’s sufficiently extreme you can mimic what goes on at the centre of the sun. So this guy had an idea fifty years ago, and it’s taken all those decades ever since to get to the point where we’ve now built a system that we strongly believe is now big enough and capable enough to achieve that dream – to get significantly more energy out than the laser itself delivers.

How close is that goal?
We’re now starting the final phase of the project, which we believe will take about a year. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, but our high expectation is that, yes, we will prove the scientific break-even point, where you get more energy out than you put in. And then of course it’s still a considerable task to take that scientific proof and configure it into a power plant. We’re now working on the basis that we know the science is laid to rest, we know that’s a done deal, so this really will mark the end of that fifty year journey. Then we set about talking to the power utility companies, and the large-scale industrial vendors – Hitachi, GE, Westinghouse, Toshiba – to convert that scientific proof into engineering reality.

Given that somebody thought of it right away, why has it taken 50 years to reach this point?
It’s a strange combination of science, sociology and politics. The idea of how you would do it was formed in 1960 and broadly that idea hasn’t changed in all of these decades. There were some difficult pieces of physics and engineering that came along that made it much harder, but it has also strongly been influenced by geopolitics and by energy prices. So we’ve seen the amount of focus that’s gone into this research ebb and flow over the decades, but we’re now at a point where the hurdle has finally been cleared, and we’re performing the experiments to figure out exactly how to activate this energy. If money were no object at the time and there was a real strategic need to drive it, could it have happened in less than fifty years? Absolutely; probably significantly.

What about other fusion projects, like the international ITER project? Is it still worth pursuing them?
No matter how wonderfully well laser fusion performs there is a finite rate at which it can grow and impact the energy economy when you’re talking about hundreds or maybe even thousands of terawatts of energy the world will need. So magnetic fusion – which is the ITER approach – advanced fission, offshore wind, solar thermal, photovoltaic, not to mention energy conservation – all of these things will be needed. We need to pursue every possible option.

For more on the National Ignition Facility, visit http://lasers.llnl.gov

This article was originally published in House Magazine #15. With a successful test likely in 2012 we’ll be catching up with Mike Dunne and his colleagues at NIF for a new article in the coming weeks.

all images: NIF/LLNL

in our continuing look at what 2012 might have in store for us science-wise, we travel to the National Ignition Facility in California, where researchers could be on the brink of a new era in clean energy: nuclear fusion

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wishing you all a cosmic New Year!

download this collage to fit your screen at super-collider.com/goodies

to celebrate the arrival of 2012, super/collider  teamed up with our pals at Protein® to give you the chance to win one of their sleek Chromo-coded calendars – the perfect way to keep track of the final days of planet earth! read more

to mark the first month of the Mayan year of doom, super/collider will be publishing stories about and predictions for 2012 throughout January. we start with “Death From Above?” – a look at one man’s efforts to save the world from cataclysm via a DIY asteroid observatory in rural Wales, originally published in Dazed & Confused

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already feeling frazzled by the rush to catch up back at work? take a minute to check out John Hooper’s new Landsounds project – a work-in-progress that combines still photography and sound recordings of life’s quiet little corners

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moon cushion by Loligo / limited edition of 12

hand screenprinted on grey cotton linen, this 30cm diameter cushion was lovingly created from a vintage astronomical image of the moon by Loren Filis of Loligo

£40 /buy now

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next event: Deep Future
join us on 22 February 2012 as we voyage to the year 3000 and beyond to see what the deep and distant future holds for humankind – or our descendents

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later today, researchers working at the Large Hadron Collider will host a seminar to (quote) provide an update on experimental progress over the last 12 months (end quote) at the Atlas and CERN experiments. and though the CERN press office says “we are told that there will be NO announcement confirming or refuting the existence of the Higgs boson” the rest of the world is buzzing about the possibility they’ve found hints of the elusive ‘God Particle’ read more

with Dawn’s adventures in the asteroid field entering month five, amazing images and videos continue to arrive from deep space. first it was a close up view of Vesta, then a 3D tour of the asteroid, and now NASA have released these beautiful images of rocks from Vesta – found right here on earth

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despite the failure of Russia’s ambitious Phobos sample return mission, the next chapter in our exploration of Mars began over the weekend with the launch of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory read more

super/collider’s own John Hooper was involved in the making of this amazing promo for Another Earth, which tells the story of a second planet approaching ours. filmed at a school in West London, it shows the textbooks literally being re-written as a solar system forms inside the school and the earth’s climate changes. to make the video, John shot still images of the backgrounds, which were then animated by director Rupert Cresswell of Glint…

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Few people on earth can tell the kind of stories that Sylvia Earle can. We’re huddled around a speaker phone, leaning forward intently as the legendary oceanographer recounts one of the most memorable moments of her long career. The year was 1979, and Earle was about to attempt the deepest undersea walk ever attempted. At a depth of 381 metres beneath the surface, she stepped off the edge of a submersible – and into the abyss read more

handmade by the ever-crafty folks at Present&Correct, each of these one-of-a-kind envelopes is made using lovingly recycled 1960s science journals. each set contains six envelopes, blank notecards and address labels – ideal for invites, thank-yous and other essential correspondence of a scientific nature

£8 / buy now

photograph by John Hooper / edition of 12
20x16inch C-type Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper

£240 / buy now

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on distant moons and remote mountaintops, crystals slowly grow starwards, while lichens, mosses and funghi creep across the landscape. mushroom clouds bloom on the horizon, while planets and insects hover under orange skies. as strange figures dance on hilltops, expressways cut through canyons made of rock and cities

this is the strange and wonderful world of collage artist Seana Gavin’s mind and art: a surreal set of worlds composed of images from our world, but utterly different. with her first three dimensional work opening this week at b store, and being fans of a good diorama, we thought it high time we caught up her to talk all things cosmic…

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it’s taken us days and days and days to even start this post – possibly because we can’t actually bring ourselves to acknowledge that after almost sixty years of nature broadcasting, Sir David Attenborough might well have completed his last major TV epic read more

Dendronephthya Carnation Tree Coral read more

the world of particle physics is full of huge detectors and complicated machines searching for unimaginably small particles. the Particle Zoo – in contrast – is a colourful little workshop in LA created and run by self-taught physicist Julie Peasley. visiting the studio is like entering a subatomic world of stitching, sewing machines, buttons, zips, multi-coloured felts – and a few cats to keep Schrödinger happy. her immaculately-ordered shelves echo the grid-like standard model structure, with ‘boson eyes’ at one end, ‘beta decay zippers’ at the other. even every thread colour is ‘charm’ or ‘strange’, ‘truth’ or ‘beauty’

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gallium (Ga) read more

super/collider present an exclusive selection from the Particle Zoo collection:  this smiley gluon is the ‘glue’ of the strong nuclear force.  it is the boson that communicates the strong force – holding quarks together.  it is has no mass or electric charge.

made from acrylic felt with poly fill for minimum mass, approx 15cm across. (only suitable for ages 5 and up)

£10 / buy now

Sister Arrow is an artist and illustrator inspired by nature, metaphysics and primitive life. this beautiful five-colour Risograph print is part of her ‘vessel’ series, based on research into creating a homemade terrarium

£15 /buy now

details
A4 colour Risograph print on 200gsm stock
new colourway re-edition
hand-signed by the artist

photograph by John Hooper, edition of 12
25x20inch C-type Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper

£350 / buy now

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The world’s newest, largest and most complicated telescope is now official open for astronomy. Located high in the deserts of Chile, the European Southern Observatory’s Atacama Large Milllimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) is made up of a series of interlinked antennas stretching across an ultra-arid plain 5000m above sea level read more

28 September 2011

the first book in our new All About: Science series launches this Wednesday at The Landfill Library – a pop-up shop at Wiltons Café with new books by Landfill Editions and music from L-V-L and Burning Bush of TOP NICE.  read more

All About: Science is a new series from Landfill Editions and super/collider, exploring the myriad worlds of science through the eyes of contemporary image makers

our first book focuses on crystals – from Mexican caves and ancient rituals to solar panels and outer space. find out what makes a crystal grow, why they were worshipped and where to find the world’s largest specimens in this guide, illustrated by Nous Vous

£6 /buy now

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a 22.70g fragment of the Carancas meteorite, an H chondrite breccia containing clasts of petrologic types 4 to 5 read more

after nearly three decades of smashing particles together, physicists at America’s forerunner to the Large Hadron Collider will be raising a glass as the Tevatron is shut down for the final time later today. and while many are talking about the closure in the context of increasing international competition (like China’s recent space habitat launch), the team at Fermilab (whose amazing offices are pictured above) will probably be remembering the good times, like discovering the elusive top quark particle, and looking ahead to the mysteriously named Project X

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situated nearly 2400m above the surrounding ocean, the telescopes of the European Northern Observatory on La Palma offer astronomers some of the best night-sky views on earth. every evening, their giant optics open and begin tracking the sky, imaging hazy nebulas and distant galaxies. located on the western-most of the Canary Islands, the facility is perched on the rim of an ancient volcanic caldera, high above clouds that drift towards the coast of Africa. silent and remote, it is truly a world apart  read more

forty years ago this January, Apollo 14 blasted off from Kennedy Space Center, bound for the moon. six days later, the three-man crew landed in the Fra Mauro highlands, and spent nearly ten hours exploring the lunar surface. after the initial euphoria of Neil Armstrong’s first small steps and the drama of Apollo 13, this mission – along with the three subsequent landings – was largely forgotten by the general public, marking the beginning of the end of the Apollo program and mankind’s exploration of the lunar surface

as the 40th anniversaries of these final landings passes, super/collider invites you to delve into these lost missions by exploring the NASA photo archives to help us create an open-source exhibition based on mankind’s final days on the moon. building on our apollo77 exhibition, Apollo’s End will celebrate the thousands of images we rarely see: sun-streaked Hasselblad photographs, blurred motion shots and the grainy, gritty beauty of the lunar landscape itself – a world so long dreamed of, and so soon forgotten once we arrived read more

in July 2011, super/collider joined Unknown Fields and students from the Architecture Association School on an epic journey into the atomic and cosmic regions of the former Soviet Union: from the ruins of Chernobyl to Baikonur Cosmodrome and points between and beyond read more

photograph by John Hooper / edition of 12
16x12inch C-type Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper

£120 / buy now

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Monika is a 22 year-old student from Poland studying math, science and astronomy in New York City. Valerie Phillips is a renowned London-based photographer who spent a few years (on and off) documenting Monica’s life of studying, swimming, eating doughnuts, partying and just walking around. signed by the author, this unique book is printed on lovely matte stock with great commentary from Valerie and Monika about each other

£15 /buy now

carefully researched and beautifully laid-out poster by Present&Correct showing Britain’s endangered native species – from ‘Adder’ to ‘Zonate Tooth Fungi’. measuring 420x595mm, it comes printed on lovely recycled stock in a neatly-designed tube

£21 /buy now

a stunningly simple ceramic birdhouse inspired by the natural forms of birds nests, Birdball provides functional nesting for small garden visitors like blue tits, coal tits and marsh tits. the hole is large enough to allow them in, but small enough to keep out predators. made in Devon, each Birdball is supplied with stainless steel wire (1m long), a tree protector and detailed instructions. a perfect gift for the style-conscious orthnithologist in your life

£35 / buy now

photograph by John Hooper / edition of 12
20x16inch C-type Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper

£240 / buy now

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