recent news in science that has sparked the public imagination
I am delighted to be involved with this small, but exciting meeting being held here in Dublin on the 6th and 7th of September. I published a number of papers in the 1990's on pulsed plasmas, including a letter in Phys Rev Letters on efficient negative ions sources using modulated RF plasmas. The idea of …
Continue reading Pulsed Plasma Diagnostics Workshop, Early Registration Deadline Extended
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has finally been given the go ahead by French authorities. The ITER organisation received a letter from the French Safety Authority, Agence de sûreté nucléaire (ASN), on 20 June 2012 which granted a license to build an experimental tokamak nuclear fusion reactor in the south of France. Construction of ITER …
Continue reading Plasma Fusion Device Gets Go Ahead from French Government
A while back, I responded to a claim from Lawrenceville Plasma Physics that they were close to a commercial fusion reactor. I was annoyed that such claims were being made and even more concerned that such claims were not receiving a strong criticism from the scientific community. I read the paper published in the journal - …
Continue reading Why Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Results are Not Even Wrong; a Detailed Analysis.
I started this blog with the aim to promote topical stories in the area of plasma technology. I wanted to talk about things that interested me that I thought would interest a wider audience of scientist and engineers working in the area of plasma technology. In the last few months two new sources of news have started. The first …
Continue reading Plasma in the News, Two New Sources of Information on Plasma Technology
Naval Research Laboratory scientists have obtained a first-ever measured altitude profile of a dim extreme-ultraviolet terrestrial airglow emission that provides vital information needed to test and improve the accuracy of advanced techniques for remote sensing of the daytime ionosphere. They have obtained this altitude profile using scans from the Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric Detection System …
DOE Plasma Science Center Annual Meeting at Princeton Plasma Lab More than 50 plasma physicists from across the country will assemble at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) on Thursday, May 17, and Friday, May 18, for the third annual meeting of the Plasma Science Center for Predictive Control of Plasma Kinetics. …
Continue reading PLasma Science Meeting at Princeton Plasma Lab
Panasonic's first quarter (January-March 2012) losses grew an order of magnitude to reach USD 5 billion. In part, this loss is due to their heavy investment in plasma display technology as well as natural disasters. Plasma TV's are a technology that use micro-discharges to produce UV light to excite phosphors that drive a classical Red, Green and Blue …
Due to the already prevalent and increasing use of silver-nanoparticle (Ag-NP) products and the raised concerns in particular for the aquatic environment, analytical techniques for the characterization of such products are of need. However, because Ag-NP products are of different compositions and polydispersities, analysis especially of the size distribution is challenging. In this work, an …
Continue reading Nano Particle Detection Using Plasma Based Mass Spectrosopy
ICOPS 2012 The 39th IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science (ICOPS) will be held in Edinburgh, UK. The conference venue is the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC).In addition to the conference, a mini-coursewill be offered and selected papers will be published in a special issue of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Science Society (NPSS) journal …
Continue reading The 39th IEEE International Conference on Plasma Science
Recent reports of a massive sun spot known as 1476 suggested that we may be faced with a massive flare known as a Carrington event. However latest reports from USAF/NOAA of Solar and Geophysical Activity, states that while region 1476 (N09W33) continues to be the most dominant region on the disk with an area of 840 millionths …
Continue reading Sun Spot 1476 Decays, No Massive Flare Expected
Mike B Hopkins 