Word: fusion
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Even though it came from a small company competing against the giants of the field, there was nothing modest about the announcement made last week by KMS Industries Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich. The firm claimed that its scientists had briefly sustained a laser-generated fusion reaction and called its work a "definitive step" toward taming thermonuclear fusion-the same process that produces the explosive power of the hydrogen bomb and the vast heat and radiation...
...expected, the claim caused widespread excitement. It promised that fusion plants might some day supply mankind with practically unlimited energy. Indeed, an AEC spokesman called the feat "a small but significant initial step." But at week's end doubt was growing among some nuclear scientists that the laboratory had done anything more than Soviet and U.S. researchers had previously announced. In fact, it seemed quite possible that true thermonuclear fusion had not really occurred at all during the Ann Arbor experiments...
Fast Neutrons. Unlike the more familiar process of fission (in which energy is released by the breakup of atomic nuclei), fusion involves the combining (or fusing) of two nuclei of hydrogen. The reaction releases energy-primarily in the form of high-velocity neutrons-that scientists hope some day can be harnessed to generate electricity...
...controlled fusion can occur only under conditions of very high temperature and density that researchers have tried for years to produce by using powerful magnetic fields to squeeze or confine isotopes of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium. But even the best of these "magnetic bottles" -which require tremendous amounts of energy to operate-have so far been unable to provide the necessary temperature and density for more than a tiny fraction of a second...
...over his guitar, his voice dry as locusts. Then, without warning, Bruce Springsteen rears back and uncorks a geyser of white hot sound. Cataracts of electrically charged fragments of sound lacerate the air, scattering intimations of Dylan and colliding with the fierce rhythms of Springsteen's own wild fusion of rock, jazz and folk rock...