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9/11 Twin Tower Collapse Provides Data For Building Better Fusion Reactors
Posted by Wilson Rothman at 10:00 AM on September 11, 2008
Don't be afraid. You can read that headline again. I'll wait for you... Aaaand, okay: With cold fusion nowhere in sight, hot fusion looks to be the cleanest way to whip up some atomic energy. However, the steel needed to line the reactor may not be able to take the heat. UK scientists said that temperatures inside reactors are nearly identical to those reached on the floors of the World Trade Centre that were struck by planes on September 11, 2001—and that the tragedy itself yielded helpful data. Here, on the eve of the terrorist attack's 7th anniversary, is the deal:
A team of Danish researchers has discovered a way of dating dead bodies via the corpse's eye using a nuclear particle accelerator. The procedure, which measures the amount of a carbon isotope in the eye lens, has been made possible because of atomic weapons testing half a century ago. The technique only works for people born after 1950 and will only be valid until levels of the carbon isotype have returned to normal—probably 100 years. Here's how it works.
Physicists at Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics have developed a new atomic clock that is so accurate, it will not lose a second of time in more than 200 million years. That makes the old atomic clock record holder and its 80 million year accuracy rating look like something you would get out of a gumball machine. According to designer Jun Ye, the secret to making such an accurate clock is to speed up how fast it ticks. That way, any errors will be immediately recognised. This particular clock "ticks" 430 trillion times per second. That's a hell of a lot of ticks. [
