Researchers working on fusion energy at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California revealed on Tuesday that they have achieved a long-awaited breakthrough in simulating the sun's power in a lab.
This prompted enthusiasm among the general people since fusion, the nuclear reaction that creates stars, has long been discussed by scientists as a potential future source of abundant energy.
The outcome that was revealed on Tuesday is the first fusion reaction that took place in a lab environment and really created more energy than it consumed to initiate the reaction.
If fusion can be implemented on a large scale, it will provide a source of energy that is free of the harmful long-lived radioactive waste produced by today's nuclear power plants, which use the splitting of uranium to produce energy, as well as the pollution and greenhouse gases brought on by the burning of fossil fuels.
The planets' atmospheres are heated and illuminated by sunlight produced by the continuous fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium within the sun and stars. Fusion proves to be a very clean energy source in Earth's experimental reactors and laser laboratories.
However, there was always a nagging qualification. Scientists' experiments used up more energy than the fusion reactions produced in all of their attempts to regulate the chaotic power of fusion.
This changed on December 5 at 1:03 in the morning when 192 massive lasers at the laboratory's National Ignition Facility blasted a tiny cylinder the size of a pencil eraser that contained a frozen nubbin of hydrogen coated in diamond.
The cylinder was vaporized by the laser beams that entered it from the top and bottom. The heavier types of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, were compressed into a fuel pellet the size of a BB as a result of the internal onslaught of X-rays that were produced.
The hydrogen pellet was bombarded with 2.05 megajoules of energy, or about a pound of TNT, in a brief period of time that lasted less than 100 trillionths of a second. A flood of neutron particles, a byproduct of fusion, came out, each carrying around 3 megajoules of energy, an increase in energy of 1.5.
This went above what laser fusion specialists refer to as the ignition threshold, or the point at which the energy produced by fusion equals the energy of the incoming lasers that initiate the reaction.
The National Ignition Facility's development began in 1997, and the successful experiment eventually achieves the ignition aim that was pledged at that time. However, when operations started in 2009, the facility barely produced any fusion energy, which was an embarrassing letdown given the federal government's $3.5 billion investment.
Scientists from Livermore finally reported some progress in 2014, but the amount of energy generated was negligible — only enough to power a 60-watt light bulb for five minutes. Over the following few years, there was very little advancement.
The facility then produced a far larger energy burst in August of last year, equal to 70% of the energy from the laser light.

The program director for weapons physics and design at Livermore, Mark Herrmann, stated in an interview that the researchers then carried out a series of experiments to better understand the unexpected success in August and that they worked to increase laser energy by almost 10% and improve the design of the hydrogen targets.
In September, the first laser shot at 2.05 megajoules was made, and that first attempt generated 1.2 megajoules of fusion energy. The spherical hydrogen pellet was not crushed equally, and some of it practically squirted out the side and did not reach fusion temperatures, according to analyses.
The researchers made certain modifications that they thought would improve the results.
According to Dr. Herrmann, "the forecast before the shot was that it may go up by a factor of two." Actually, it increased a little bit more than that.
The National Ignition Facility's primary objective is to carry out experiments that will aid in the maintenance of American nuclear weapons. The implications for generating energy right away are therefore uncertain.
Fusion would effectively be an emissions-free source of energy, reducing the need for coal and gas-burning power plants that annually release billions of tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
But if ever, it will be a while before fusion is accessible on a broad, practical basis.
According to the majority of climate scientists and decision-makers, the world must achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius or the even more ambitious aim of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Tokamaks are doughnut-shaped reactors that have been the mainstay of fusion research up to now. A plasma is a cloud of positively charged nuclei and negatively charged electrons created when hydrogen gas is heated to temperatures high enough to remove the electrons from the hydrogen nuclei. As the nuclei fuse together, energy is released as neutrons that shoot outward are trapped by magnetic fields inside the doughnut-shaped plasma.
Although the work at NIF uses a different methodology, not much has been done to make the concept of a laser fusion power plant a reality up to this point. Technology and science both face very big obstacles, according to Dr. Budil.
Although NIF is the most potent laser in the world, it is also the slowest and least effective since it uses technology that is many decades old.
The device, which is roughly the size of a sports stadium, is made to conduct simple scientific experiments rather than serve as a model for the production of power.

Ten shots every week on average. A commercial laser fusion plant would require substantially faster lasers, maybe 10 times faster, capable of firing at a machine gun pace.
Additionally, NIF still uses a lot more energy than the fusion reactions do.
Even though the most recent experiment yielded a net energy gain in comparison to the energy of the 2.05 megajoules in the entering laser beams, NIF still needed to draw 300 megajoules from the electrical grid in order to produce the brief laser pulse.

Even while other kinds of lasers are more effective, researchers say a practical laser fusion power plant will likely need far bigger energy increases than the 1.5 seen in this most recent fusion pulse.
Different iterations of the NIF experiment are being studied by researchers elsewhere. The hydrogen might be heated more effectively using other kinds of lasers with different wavelengths.

Some scientists prefer a "direct drive" strategy for laser fusion, in which the laser light heats the hydrogen directly. The hydrogen would absorb more energy as a result, but this could potentially lead to unstable fusion processes.
The scientists working on the nuclear stockpile, which is the NIF's main objective, will benefit from the findings that were announced on Tuesday. Scientists are trying to replace the data they used to get from underground nuclear bomb detonations, which the United States ceased in 1992, by conducting these nuclear reactions in a lab at a less damaging scale.

Dr. Herrmann stated that the facility's increased fusion output will generate more data "that allows us to preserve the confidence in our nuclear deterrent without the necessity for further underground testing." The output, which is 30,000 trillion watts of power, "creates very harsh situations in itself" that are more akin to nuclear weapons exploding.

The purpose of this particular Livermore experiment, according to Riccardo Betti, chief scientist of the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester, who was not participating, is to show that a thermonuclear fuel may be ignited for the first time in a laboratory setting.
And this was completed, he continued. "So this is a fantastic outcome."

CC : Kenneth Chang , NY times

The ISS is now home to a varied international crew that will stay there for five months.
On October 5th, the Crew-5 mission was launched from Florida's NASA Kennedy Space Center, carrying a Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket. After a 29-hour orbital chase, that Dragon, called Endurance, finally connected with the International Space Station (ISS) today, October 6.
 
At 5:01 p.m. EDT , Endurance made contact with the forward port of the station's Harmony module as the two spacecraft flew over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa. Ten minutes later, the docking process was finished.
Around 6:45 p.m., the hatches between Endurance and the ISS were opened. EDT, and approximately 10 minutes later, the Crew-5 astronauts—Nicole NASA's Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan's Koichi Wakata, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina—flew onto the orbiting lab. They'll spend five months residing aboard the ISS.
Mann, the first Native American woman in space, and Kikina, the first cosmonaut to fly aboard a SpaceX Dragon, have the honor of carrying personal mantles for this journey. Both, as well as Cassada, are first-time space travelers; Wakata has gone to space five times.
SpaceX's Crew-3 mission was also transported to and from the ISS by the Dragon Endurance. Four Crew Dragon capsules, which are updated and put through testing before each subsequent flight, are used by SpaceX. The components used by Endurance during flight were a brand-new heat shield, parachutes, and nose cone.
Although Falcon 9 with a brand-new first stage was used for the Crew-5 liftoff, SpaceX is also well known for using older rockets. The booster was dazzling white and clear of the soot that is typically seen on the company's reflown first stages. It was painted with NASA's worm insignia.
Seven crew members, including four from SpaceX's Crew-4 mission, are already on board the ISS when the Crew-5 astronauts arrive. The countdown to Crew-4's departure from the station, which will occur in roughly a week, starts with the arrival of Crew-5, according to Sarah Walker, director for Dragon mission management at SpaceX.
The exact timing of Crew-4's splashdown return off the coast of Florida is dependent on weather, Walker said during yesterday's post-launch press conference.
CC: NASA, Josh D

​One step closer to departing on its trip to Jupiter's ice moon is NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft.
Life on Earth requires three things to thrive: a source of energy like sunlight, a liquid solvent like water, and elements like carbon that can form complex molecules known as organics.
To find out if Europa can support life, NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will fly in 2024 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The main body of Europa Clipper is an aluminum cylinder that clocks in at 10 feet (3 meters) tall and 5 feet (1.5 m) wide.
Early in June, the spacecraft body arrived at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in southern California after being outfitted with integrated electronics, cabling, and a propulsion system.
"It's an exciting time for the whole project team and a huge milestone," Jordan Evans, the mission's project manager at JPL, said in a statement(opens in new tab). "This delivery brings us one step closer to launch and the Europa Clipper science investigation."
Now that Europa Clipper is assembled, engineers and technicians will begin connecting the mission's nine science instruments in order to get the spacecraft ready for launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in October 2024.
The Europa Clipper, which takes its name from the three-masted, ocean-going merchant ships of the 19th century, intends to make roughly 50 flybys of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, which is thought to have an interior ocean with twice as much water as the total volume of Earth's seas.
With its expected arrival in the Jupiter system in 2030, the spacecraft will employ its collection of instruments to gather information about Europa's atmosphere, surface, and interior in order to start addressing questions about the moon's habitability.
Additionally, the Europa Clipper will scan Europa's broken and crisscrossed crust for any prospective water plumes that might be spewing samples of the hypothesized deep ocean.
One of the scientific community's major priorities has long been an expedition to Europa. Members of the Planetary Society contributed to the success of the expedition by writing tens of thousands of letters to their congressional representatives, hosting conferences in Washington, D.C., and lobbying with Congress to get funding for the mission. In 2015, NASA gave the project official approval.
cc : NASA, JPL/Caltech, Andrew J

Dunes are familiar features on the Earth and also occur on the Mars ,Saturn and Saturn Moon. What is common is an atmosphere, plus substantial amounts of loose sand particles. Mars is the most closely studied by the scientists. Scientists are tracing the movement of dust over Martian aeons using a high-definition camera from orbit. Recently scientists have shared a picture of barchan dunes formed by the Red planet. The Martian desert is a geologic wonder. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's powerful camera recently captured a brilliant image of the sand dunes inside a Martian crater, this is located on the southern hemisphere of the Red planet. These are the star dunes. The camera that captured the image is called HiRISE or the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. Orbiter was launched in 2006 :-) its been 16 years it has been capturing images of valleys, craters, dried-up rivers. Up in the space and away from the intense martian dust storms !!!

A dark storm, which is wider than the Atlantic Ocean, was born in the neptune's northern hemisphere and discovered by Hubble in 2018. The dark storm on Neptune abruptly switched directions and started moving away from certain death according to astronomers, leaving them puzzled. Observations a year later showed that it began drifting southward toward the equator of Neptune. Usually dark spots on Neptune live for a few years before fading away or vanishing. To the surprise of observers, Hubble spotted the vortex change direction by August 2020, doubling back to the north, making a sharp U-turn.  Though Hubble has tracked similar dark spots over the past 30 years, though it is unpredictable due to the  atmospheric behavior in Neptune.
At the same time, astronomers spotted a second, smaller dark spot on the planet. This smaller "cousin" storm maybe a piece of the original vortex that broke and drifted away.
"We are excited about these observations because this smaller dark fragment is potentially part of the dark spot’s disruption process," said Michael H. Wong of the University of California at Berkeley. "This is a process that's never been observed. We have seen some other dark spots fading away, and they're gone, but we've never seen anything disrupt, even though it’s predicted in computer simulations."
The current storm, which is around 7,403 KM i.e. 4,600 miles across is the fourth darkest spot Hubble has tracked since 1993. Two other dark storms were discovered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989 as it flew by the distant planet. These storms are high pressure systems that rotate clockwise due to the planet's rotation, unlike hurricanes on the Earth, which are low pressure systems that rotate counterclockwise. Spotting a smaller storm that potentially broke off from the larger vortex was surprising to everyone. Astronomers are informally calling this smaller storm 'dark spot junior'. The junior is still quite large.
"We wouldn't know anything about these latest dark spots if it wasn't for Hubble," Simon said. "We can now follow the large storm for years and watch its complete life cycle.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency).
cc: NAV GOV, University of Berkeley​

Over the past decade or so, there has been a lot of interest in the development and production of plant-based and cell-based alternatives to farmed meat. Interest in plant-based substitutes and cell-based meats referred to as meat alternatives has grown rapidly over the past decade. While many consumers choose to avoid meat from farmed animals or animal foods altogether, a growing number of people are replacing a share of their meat intake with “plant-based substitutes” that seek to approximate the texture, flavor, and nutrient profiles of farmed meat using ingredients derived from pulses, grains, oils, and other plants and/or fungi. These products may soon be joined by “cell-based meats” also referred “lab-grown meat,” “cellular meat,” “cultivated meat,” or “clean meat” grown from animal stem cells using tissue engineering techniques, which currently remain for the most part in the prototype stage of development. The global market for plant-based substitutes is projected to reach $85 billion by 2030. Cell based meat is still not available commercially, research and development are happening in a great rate.
Many think/ estimates that demand for beef and dairy products in the U.S. will shrink by 80–90% by 2035, driven largely by a projection that the cost of “modern protein foods”. Plant-based substitutes and cell-based meats will be five times cheaper than existing animal proteins!
Meat alternatives are often promoted as a means of mitigating the environmental, animal welfare and sometimes public health 😊Growing scientific consensus has established that substantial shifts toward plant-forward diets, particularly in high meat-consuming countries, are essential for meeting climate change mitigation targets. Seafood alternatives are also being developed to address concerns about the depletion of many of the world's wild fisheries.
Epidemiologic studies have linked Western dietary patterns that are high in the consumption of animal products, processed foods, refined sugars, and fats with escalating rates of chronic diseases. Swapping out red meat for plant-based meat alternatives can lower some cardiovascular risk factors, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford Medicine. The small study was funded by an unrestricted gift from Beyond Meat, which makes plant-based meat alternatives. The researchers used products from the company to compare the health effects of meat with plant-based alternatives. Beyond Meat was not involved in designing or conducting the study and did not participate in data analysis.
It may seem obvious that a patty made of plants is a healthier option than a hamburger. But many of the new meat alternatives, such as Beyond Meat, have relatively high levels of saturated fat and added sodium and are considered highly processed foods, meaning they are made with food isolates and extracts as opposed to whole beans or chopped mushrooms. All these factors have been shown to contribute to cardiovascular disease risk, said Christopher Gardner, PhD, professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. “There’s been this sort of backlash against these new meat alternatives,” Gardner said. “The question is, if you’re adding sodium and coconut oil, which is high in saturated fat, and using processed ingredients, is the product still actually healthy?” To find out, Gardner and his team gathered a group of more than 30 individuals and assigned them to two different diets, each one for eight weeks. He and his team conducted a study that enrolled 36 participants for 16 weeks of dietary experimentation. Gardner designed the research as a crossover study, meaning participants acted as their own controls. Regardless of which diet participants were on, both groups had on average two servings of meat or plant-based alternatives per day, carefully tracking their meals in journals and working with members of Gardner’s team to record their eating habits. The team took precautions to eliminate bias throughout the study, including working with a third party at Stanford, the Quantitative Sciences Unit, to analyze the data once all participants had finished their 16-week dietary interventions. “The QSU helped us draw up a statistical analysis plan, which we published online before the study was completed,” Gardner said. “That way our plan was public, and we were accountable for the specific primary and secondary outcomes that we had initially said we wanted to go after — namely, the participants’ levels of TMAO, blood cholesterol, blood pressure and weight.” In Gardner’s study, the researchers observed that participants who ate the red-meat diet during the first eight-week phase had an increase in TMAO, while those who ate the plant-based diet first did not. But something peculiar happened when the groups switched diets. Those who transitioned from meat to plant had a decrease in TMAO levels, which was expected. Those who switched from plant to meat, however, did not see an increase in TMAO. It turns out that there are bacterial species responsible for the initial step of creating TMAO in the gut. These species are thought to flourish in people whose diets are red-meat heavy, but perhaps not in those who avoid meat. Gardner hopes to continue studying the relationship between health and plant-based meat alternatives, particularly as it pertains to changes in the microbiome. Gardner said he’s also interested in expanding his research into diet patterns overall. “Maybe next we’ll look at a combination of dietary factors on health — perhaps alternative meat combined with alternative dairy products,” he said.
Plant-based substitutes and cell-based meats are gaining a foothold in global markets. From an environmental perspective, plant-based substitutes can provide substantial benefits over farmed beef, to which they are most often compared by industry and media. Cell-based meat could provide benefits as well for most environmental concerns, with a few caveats Meat alternatives are not intended to address concerns associated with industry consolidation, or the loss of farmers' and public autonomy over the food system, but as products to be offered within existing protein supply chains that appeal to those who enjoy meat but seek to reduce environmental, animal welfare, and public health harms.
There is no silver bullet solution to addressing the public health, environmental, and animal welfare challenges associated with protein consumption. My take is plant based substitutes is here to stay !!!
Article Credit to: Front. Sustain. Food Syst., Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future,Stanford medicine, Department of Environmental Health & Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, United States, isk Sciences and Public Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, United States, Jean-Francois Hocquette, Cristobal N. AGUILAR

Our climate is changing everyday. ​Humans have caused major climate changes to happen already. Changes that is observed over the 20th century include increases in global average air and ocean temperature, rising global sea levels, reduction of snow and ice cover, and changes in atmospheric and regional weather patterns, which influence seasonal rainfall conditions.
These changes are caused by extra heat in the climate system due to the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. The additional greenhouse gases are primarily due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), agriculture, and land clearing. All these activities increase the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The evidence of climate change is supported by extensive scientific research performed and reported across the world. Climate models are used to understand the causes of climate change and to project changes into the future. However, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years. Temperatures will be the same or might not change a lot ,but will remain well-elevated for many, many centuries. Climate change pose risks to human and natural systems, through more frequent and severe heat waves, coastal inundation due to sea level rise, disruptions to rainfall patterns and other effects. There is a time lag between what we do and when we are going to feel the effects, but it is knocking at our doors !!
Analyses of a range of climate scenarios indicate the most severe risks of climate change can largely be mitigated if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced to the point they are no longer accumulating in the atmosphere.
What is Greenhouse effect that everyone talks about? In simple terms the greenhouse effect is a natural process that warms the Earth’s surface. When the Sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected back to space and some is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and some artificial chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
The absorbed energy warms the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. This process maintains the Earth’s temperature at around 33 degrees Celsius warmer than it would otherwise be, allowing life on Earth to exist. 
Without major action to reduce emissions, global temperature is on track to rise by 2.5 °C to 4.5 °C (4.5 °F to 8 °F) by 2100, according to the latest estimates.
Particularly burning fossil fuels agriculture and land clearing – are increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases. This is increasing the greenhouse effect, which is contributing to warming of the Earth.
Its not not be too late to avoid or limit some of the worst effects of climate change. We can have two step approach reducing the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Learning to live with, and adapt to, the climate change that has already been set in motion.
Read more about NASA's efforts to address climate change at
https://climate.nasa.gov/solutions/resources/.
CC to
https://climate.nasa.gov/.
​https://www.awe.gov.au/science-research/climate-change/adaptation
​