Using Artificial Intelligence to Speed up and Improve the most Computationally-Intensive aspects of Plasma Physics in Fusion

Illustration combining the ideas of artificial intelligence and fusion(Illustration credit: Kyle Palmer / PPPL Communications Department)

Researchers look to machine learning to optimize the design and control of stellarators and tokamaks. Researchers are using artificial intelligence to perfect the design of the vessels surrounding the super-hot plasma, optimize heating methods and maintain stable control of the reaction for increasingly long periods. A new article explains how a researcher team used machine learning to avoid magnetic perturbations, or disruptions, which destabilize fusion plasma.

The intricate dance of atoms fusing and releasing energy has fascinated scientists for decades. Now, human ingenuity and artificial intelligence are coming together at the U.S...

Read More

WASP-193b, a Giant Planet with a Density Similar to that of Cotton Candy

©Artwork generated with OpenAI’s DALL-E, created by David Berardo, May 2024

This exoplanet is larger but seven times less massive than Jupiter and is the second least dense planet discovered to date. An international team led by researchers from the EXOTIC Laboratory of the University of Liège, in collaboration with MIT and the Astrophysics Institute in Andalusia, has just discovered WASP-193b, an extraordinarily low-density giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star.

This new planet, located 1,200 light-years from Earth, is 50% larger than Jupiter but seven times less massive, giving it an extremely low density comparable to that of cotton candy...

Read More

Physicists create Five-Lane Superhighway for Electrons

blue and purple highway

Artist’s rendition of the superhighway for electrons that can occur in rhombohedral graphene, a special kind of graphite (pencil lead).
Credit: Sampson Wilcox, MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics

MIT physicists and colleagues have created a five-lane superhighway for electrons that could allow ultra-efficient electronics and more. The work, reported in the May 9 issue of Science, is one of several important discoveries by the same team over the last year involving a material that is essentially a unique form of pencil lead.

“This discovery has direct implications for low-power electronic devices because no energy is lost during the propagation of electrons, which is not the case in regular materials where the electrons are scattered,” says Long Ju, an assistant professor in the ...

Read More

Raspberry in the Sky: Astronomers discover a New Supernova Remnant Candidate

Raspberry in the sky: astronomers discover a new supernova remnant candidate
RGB composite image where the total intensity map of Raspberry, observed by ASKAP at ν = 944 MHz, is in red and blue while WISE 12 µm infrared image is in green. To present the structure of Raspberry, different colormaps and adjusted contrast levels were used. A linear scale is applied to all images. The inset is the ASKAP Stokes−V zoomed-in image showing the possible progenitor source. Credit: Lazarević et al., 2024.

Astronomers from the Western Sydney University in Australia and elsewhere report the detection of a new supernova remnant (SNR) candidate. The newfound SNR candidate, dubbed “Raspberry” due to its morphology, was identified in the near side of the Milky Way’s Scutum-Centaurus Arm. The findings were detailed in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

...Read More