Achieving inertial confinement fusion (ICF) has been a goal of the US fusion program for 25 years. Imploding a small capsule of frozen deuterium-tritium fuel may allow ignition of a fusion reaction that would produce a usable excess of energy. However, considerable technical challenges face the project including creating a fast enough implosion that is uniform in all directions to within a few percent. This is now looking feasible based on the latest experiments using the Z-pinch x-ray machine at Sandia National Laboratory (in collaboration with Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Labs). Experiments show that the system should be able to uniformly and sufficiently compress the larger fusion capsules (>5mm) required for high fusion yields.

Journal article: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v88/e215004

2) Neutrinos make for small extra dimensions
H. Davoudias, P. Langacker and M. Perelstein
Physical Review D (Print issue: May 15, 2002)

Fundamental theories of particle physics and cosmology often require the use of extra dimensions that might be curled up to small scales. The existence of oscillating neutrinos (as recently confirmed by Sudbury Neutrino Observatory data) places constraints on how large any extra dimensions could be. Using the latest neutrino data, the authors most conservative bound suggests that extra dimension should only be visible on a scale less than 0.82 micrometers (approx. one millionth of a meter). Thus, currently planned gravitational experiments are unlikely to detect these dimensions if they exist.

Journal article: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v65/e105015

3) Nuclear pasta
G. Watanabe, K. Sato, K. Yasuoka, T. Ebisuzaki
arXiv preprint server

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Contact: David Harris
harris@aps.org
301-209-3238
American Physical Society
15-May-2002