Monday 30 July 2012

Forthnightly Science News Digest - 30/07/12


Most powerful laser blast achieved:  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a fusion research laboratory, blasted their fuel pellet with the most powerful laser beam attained in history. The laboratory, holding already the record for the biggest and most powerful laser, generated 300 trillion watts of power. The technique used by the laboratory is firing 192 lasers within a few trillionths of a second onto a 2-millimeter-diameter target in order to reach pressures, inside the pellet, high enough to generate fusion. This would release an enormous amount of energy, which is cleaner than fission. Although we can already make fusion happen, the real problem in the fusion energy research is to take useful energy from it. Nobody managed yet to do it, but scientists at LLNL hope to reach a break-even point (in which energy expenditure to fire the lasers equals energy income from fusion) by the end of the year.


Bacteria consumes waste and produces energy:  A new microbial is capable of consuming organic waste and produce energy at the same time. The microbial consumes waste and an energetic potential is the end product. This technique constitutes about 2% of annual electrical American power consumption, but most of the energy produced is used to power the facilities. This is not a problem as the microbial still work on consuming waste. Unfortunately there are limits for these bacteria, as only organic waste can be consumed.


Furthest spiral galaxy discovered:  Hubble spots a new furthest spiral galaxy. About two-thirds of bright galaxies discovered is spiral. When astronomers at the university of Toronto discovered it, they immediately thought of an error, being 10.7 billion light-years distant from Earth. The distance was calculated from the light-shift and that puts the galaxy to an astounding age of 3 billion years after the Big Bang. The age of the universe now is around 14 billion years and that would make this galaxy the earliest spiral galaxy every found.

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