plasma

SYDNEY—Pharmaceutical companies scored a legal victory that will again allow them to pay people who cross the border from Mexico for their blood plasma, giving a boost to U.S. supply of a critical ingredient needed for treating serious disorders. On Friday, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction that prevents border officials from enforcing a ban on paying for plasma donations from Mexicans who enter the U.S. on visitor visas. The…

Most of us grow up familiar with the prevailing law that limits how quickly information can travel through empty space: the speed of light, which tops out at 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second.While photons themselves are unlikely to ever break this speed limit, there are features of light which don't play by the same rules.Manipulating them won't hasten our ability to travel to the stars, but they could help us clear the way to a whole new class of laser technology.Physicists in the US have shown that, under…

MIT researchers have demonstrated a 3D-printed plasma sensor for orbiting spacecraft that works just as well as much more expensive, semiconductor sensors. These durable, precise sensors could be used effectively on inexpensive, lightweight satellites known as CubeSats, which are commonly utilized for environmental monitoring or weather prediction. Credit: Figure courtesy of the researchers and edited by MIT NewsCheap and quick to produce, these digitally manufactured <span class="glossaryLink"…

Artist’s illustration of a pulsar. Credit: Carl Knox, OzGrav-Swinburne UniversityOccasionally pulsars—rapidly-spinning remnants of stars that flash like a lighthouse—show extreme variations in brightness. Astrophysicists predict that these short bursts of brightness occur because dense regions of interstellar <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>plasma</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Plasma is one of the four…

Last year, NASA achieved something science fiction writers have been dreaming about for decades: It created oxygen on Mars. A microwave-size device attached to the agency’s Perseverance rover converted carbon dioxide into 10 minutes of breathable oxygen. Now, physicists say they’ve come up with a way to use electron beams in a plasma reactor to create far more oxygen, potentially in a smaller package. The technique might someday not just help astronauts breathe on the Red Planet,…

The Universe is littered with galaxy clusters – huge structures piled up at the intersections of the cosmic web. A single cluster can span millions of light-years across and be made up of hundreds, or even thousands, of galaxies.  However, these galaxies represent only a few percent of a cluster's total mass. About 80 percent of it is dark matter, and the rest is a hot plasma "soup": gas heated to above 10,000,000 ℃ and interwoven with weak magnetic fields.We and our international team of colleagues have identified a…

Doing just about anything in is expensive, but a group of MIT scientists has found a way to bring down some costs — and perhaps help accelerate climate change research. The team has developed what are the first 3D-printed plasma sensors for use in satellites. The sensors can detect the chemical composition and distribution of ion energy in plasma in the upper atmosphere. The researchers used a printable glass-ceramic material called Vitrolite to make the sensors, also known as retarding potential analyzers (RPAs). It's…

Solar winds from the snapping of a gigantic "canyon of fire" filament on the Sun are set to slam into the Earth today (20 July) or tomorrow (21 July), triggering a weak G1 geomagnetic storm.  Sun watchers first spotted solar filaments as dark, thread-like lines against the Sun's bright background on 12 July, according to SpaceWeather.com.Then, on 15 July, a filament that had snaked its way down our star's northern hemisphere erupted, carving out a roughly 238,880-mile-long (384,400 kilometers) and 12,400-mile-deep…

Nuclear fusion is an incredibly complex scientific problem that researchers are coming at from all sorts of angles, and Zap Energy is starting to make waves through one of the lesser-known approaches. The Seattle-based startup has achieved a major milestone for its Z-pinch fusion technology, and is now working to make it a commercial reality via modular, garage-sized reactors that could be scaled up to bring this experimental form of energy to the grid.Nuclear fusion research aims to recreate the process inside the Sun,…

Inside Japan’s Large Helical Device (LHD) stellarator, built to test plasma fusion confinement. Credit: Justin RuckmanNew insights into understanding turbulence in fusion plasmas.In order to achieve fusion in a power plant, it is necessary to stably confine a <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>plasma</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, along with solid, liquid, and…