The work examines the termination of relativistic electron beam events that occurred during experiments on JET, which was operated at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy until earlier this year. A better understanding of such dynamics could help the successful mitigation of plasma disruptions, which lead to energy losses in the plasma. The work could also be useful for experiments that will take place on the ITER experimental fusion tokamak, which is currently under construction in Cadarache, France.
Awarded each year, the PPCF prize aims to highlight work of the highest quality and impact published in the journal. The award was judged on originality, scientific quality and impact as well as being based on community nominations and publication metrics. The prize will be presented at the 50th European Physical Society Conference on Plasma Physics in Salamanca, Spain, from 8-12 July.
Jonathan Graves from the University of York, UK, who is PPCF editor-in-chief, calls the work is “outstanding”. “[It] explores state of the art simulations with coupled runaway electron physics, presented together with convincing comparison against disrupting JET tokamak plasmas,” he says. “The development is critically important for the safe operation of future reactor devices.”
Below, Bandaru talks to Physics World about the prize, his research and what advice he has for early-career researchers.
What does winning the 2024 PPCF Outstanding Paper Prize mean to you?
The award means a lot to me, as a recognition of the hard work that went into the research. I would like to thank my co-authors for their valuable contributions and PPCF for considering the paper.
How important is it that researchers receive recognition for their work?
Receiving recognition is encouraging for researchers and can give an extra boostand motivation in their scientific pursuits. This is more so given the nature and dynamics of contemporary research work. This new initiative from PPCF is very welcome and commendable.
What advice would you give to early-career researchers looking to pursue a career in plasma physics?
Having worked in a few different fields over the years, I can say that plasma physics is one area that entails significant complexity due to the shear range of length and timescales of the physical processes involved. This not only offers interesting and challenging problems, but also allows them to choose from a variety of problems over the course of one’s research career.
How so?
Fusion science has now reached an inflection point with enormous ongoing activity involving research labs, universities as well as start-ups all over the world. With several big and important projects underway such as ITER and the planned Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production in the UK, plasma researchers can not only make important, concrete and impactful contributions, but can also have a relatively visible long-term career path. I would say these are really exciting times to be in plasma physics.
The nuclear physicist Martin Freer is to be the next chief executive of the Faraday Institution – the UK’s independent institute for electrochemical energy-storage research. Freer, who is currently based at the University of Birmingham, will take up the role on 2 September. He replaces the condensed-matter physicist Pam Thomas, who stepped down in April after almost four years as boss.
The Faraday Institution was set up in 2017 to help research scientists and industry experts to reduce the cost and weight of batteries and improve their performance and reliability. From its base at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, it carries out research, training, market analysis and early-stage commercialization, with the research programme currently involving 27 UK universities and 50 businesses.
With a PhD in nuclear physics from Birmingham, Freer has held a number of high-profile roles in the energy sector, including director of the Birmingham Centre for Nuclear Education and Research, which he established in 2010. Five years later he became director of the university’s Birmingham Energy Institute.
Freer told Physics World that joining the Faraday Institution is a “tremendous opportunity”, especially when it comes to the transition to electric vehicles and ensuring that UK battery innovation plays an integral part.
“Energy storage is going to be needed to manage our future energy system from domestic to grid scale and there is a crucial role for the Faraday Institution to play,” says Freer. “This is a globally competitive sector, and the UK needs to ensure it does not lose the advantage it has created for itself through the Faraday Battery Challenge.”
Theoretical physicist Steven Cowley, who is chair elect of the Faraday Institution, notes that Freer is a “proven leader” and is a “terrific fit” for the institution.
“[Freer] knows first-hand what it takes to work with industry and policy makers to translate research into future energy technologies on the ground,” notes Cowley, who is director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in the US. “[He] will help to accelerate its mission as it further establishes itself in the UK’s research ecosystem.”
When Ukraine was invaded by Russia in February 2022, life for the country’s citizens was turned upside down, with scientists no exception. Efforts to help have come from many quarters both within Ukraine and the wider international community. Michael Banks caught up with Holly Tann, who has a PhD in nuclear physics from the University of Liverpool and the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and Adam McQuire, who is completing a PhD in archaeology, focusing on contemporary conflict analysis, also at Liverpool.
Why did you set up Casus Pax?
Casus Pax, which is a registered and regulated non-profit organization, was formed in the first week of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Adam went to the Polish–Ukrainian Border a few days later, initially on a fact-finding mission to find a way to help civilians escaping the war. He soon began assisting with the construction of an impromptu field hospital, inside a truck stop, to help refugees approaching the border. This field hospital treated more than 300,000 patients in the first month of the war and required a constant supply of equipment and consumables.
Did you have any links with Ukraine?
We have always had a connection with Eastern Europe. Holly has her family roots in western Ukraine while Adam has family who live close to the Ukrainian border in Poland. When the Russian invasion began, it didn’t feel like a distant conflict in some faraway land because Holly was working in Finland at the time.
What kind of support did you have to set up Casus Pax?
At the beginning it was simply the two of us and our van, but friends and family helped us to raise funds to buy aid and transport it over. Slowly we were able to gather a group of motivated, highly skilled volunteers who have been instrumental in developing Casus Pax into what it is today.
Are you now full time?
We work very long hours running Casus Pax, alongside which Adam is still finishing his PhD. Holly left academic research last year after finishing her doctorate.
How many people are involved with the organization?
Casus Pax is run by us on a day-to-day basis. We also have volunteers doing outreach, procurement and fundraising and who travel to Ukraine with us. Daniel Bromley, for example, is a physics postdoc at Imperial College London who volunteers when he can. Jessica Wade – another Imperial physicist – recently became a patron. In Ukraine we have Yuriy Polyezhayev of University of Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic as an education co-ordinator.
Your focus initially was on medical supplies – what has that involved?
Since our operations began we have delivered over a million pieces of lifesaving equipment directly to civilian practitioners across every frontline region. We tend to operate between 1 and 50 km from the front lines. These locations feature the most unstable conditions and therefore need medical resources designed to deal with severe wounds and catastrophic injuries. This equipment, sadly, is often used soon after delivery and it is unlikely that we will run out of places to deliver for quite some time.
The Casus Pax team delivering medical equipment to Kherson in October 2023 (courtesy: Adam McQuire)
Where do you get the supplies?
We buy the majority of the supplies we provide and most is sourced as surplus from the UK National Health Service, UK Ministry of Defence and private hospitals. The rest we receive as donations from the private sector.
Are you solely focused on consumables?
No. We have also provided a fleet of eight ambulances and rescue vehicles to the Ukrainian emergency services. Again, these vehicles are unlikely to survive long enough to be discarded due to age-related wear and will invariably need to be replaced fairly quickly.
What were some of the challenges in the early months of the war?
The first challenge was the language barrier. We are by no means fluent, but knowing some gives you a better understanding of Ukrainian administration and bureaucracy. The second was developing a reputation for efficiency and honesty, which took some time. The longest challenge, however, is the constant process of staying safe. Learning how to use different intelligence options and security protocols and ensuring that we are suitably trained and equipped for emergencies.
How often do you return to Ukraine?
We go back every 6–8 weeks. Sometimes we meet people who are truly desperate with nothing left – a family killed and a house destroyed, clinging to the land they grew up on accompanied only by a pet or two. Ukrainians are tough, resilient and stoic but they are not bulletproof nor are they free from the effects of prolonged psychological duress. On one visit to the front-line town of Berylsav in Kherson Oblast in 2023, which was left without reliable clean water after the Kakhovka Dam had failed, we brought medical supplies, water and water filtration equipment and a couple of tonnes of food. Despite the situation, we were greeted warmly and given boiled potatoes and kompot. One elderly woman said to Holly in Ukrainian: “I don’t know who you are and I don’t care that you can’t understand me, I love you.”
You were also asked by the Ukrainian police to help preparations for a nuclear event; what did that entail?
In July 2023 we met leaders of the Zaporzhzhia Regional Administration to discuss the risk posed by the ongoing Russian occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). The local authorities were deeply troubled and were struggling to generate international co-operation to prepare for the worst. We then received a letter from the Office of the President, recognizing the risk of an accident at the ZNPP and endorsing Casus Pax as an organization positioned to assist.
From the president’s office itself?
Yes. Two weeks later we received a call from the National Police of Ukraine HQ in Kyiv while we were in Scotland picking up an aid vehicle to take to Ukraine. They requested that we help them prepare for a major chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incident. Three weeks later we made our first delivery of hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment to the national police based in Zaporizhzhia.
Did your technical backgrounds help with this request?
With the rise in concern over the occupation of the nuclear power plant, it became clear that we were in a niche position to relay information from technical sources to humanitarian organizations. Through Zaporizhzhia we also developed a number of relationships with academic and educational leaders in the city and were asked to work with universities and schools during our deployments.
Can you say more about these educational initiatives?
It was a natural progression for us to move towards supporting schools and universities, after using our academic networks to good effect in Zaporizhzhia. We met Yuriy, now our education co-ordinator, through his translation work with the National Police. Yuriy works in several institutions, having taken on extra teaching roles to compensate for those that have left or been called up to serve. We discussed the challenges faced by the universities and schools in the frontline regions and we visited some institutions to see how learning was continuing.
The Casus Pax team at the Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic National University in April 2024 (Courtesy: Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic National University)
What were some of the challenges?
Many school classes had moved into universities without an opportunity to bring their classroom equipment, while older school children and university students were using apparatus in buildings regularly hit by airstrikes. After discussions with officials at the University of Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic, we developed a long-term plan for how Casus Pax might assist. They were keen on developing connections with researchers and institutions to facilitate outreach and cultural exchange. International collaboration collapsed post invasion and without it, academic aspiration has weakened.
What did this involve?
Our first delivery of aid to the university included medical equipment to bolster the university’s bomb shelter reserves and response capacity. But we also supplied 20 Micro:bit kits, which were donated to us by BBC Micro:bit. The University of Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic had previously been using Micro:bits in limited numbers to develop robotics and computing skills. But the university did not have enough to efficiently roll out courses. Now they do and we want to connect schools in the UK with those in Ukraine so that they can run Micro:bit classes in tandem. This has educational benefits but is also morale boosting.
How challenging is it for students?
It’s very hard for a young person to try and compartmentalize war and focus on studies and career ambitions. But the students are remarkable. Thousands of schools have suffered significant damage during the war and have had to close. Tens of thousands of internally displaced students also attend schools in safer areas often under the auspices of universities. This is not unusual, it is the norm. Education is continuing because of the commitment that a reduced number of staff have to the future of their students.
What future plans do you have for education?
In the coming months we will be hosting a platform where researchers can guest lecture remotely about their work or interests at the University of Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic. We want to expand this model to cover the whole of Ukraine, and in time take it international. We hope to have thousands of online resources available by 2025 that can be used anywhere.
Above all else we need donations and sponsorship. The equipment we supply saves lives and we need to continue with this work
What do you also hope for Casus Pax in the future?
We would like to keep our team relatively small, which means it is easier to ensure that every penny is accounted for. At the same time, we need to expand the reach of our operations. Every day we have desperate requests for urgent and often complex medical support – not only from Ukraine but elsewhere too – and sadly the only limiting factor is funding.
What kind of support do you need to achieve this?
Above all else we need donations and sponsorship. The equipment we supply saves lives and we need to continue with this work alongside the new education initiatives. Without financial support the whole operation will stop. We are also asking anyone who is interested to come forward and help, especially those keen to do outreach work.
Exoplanet researchers David Charbonneau from Harvard University and Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have won the 2024 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics. The laureates, who will share the $1m prize, have been recognized by the Kavli Foundation and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for their work characterizing the atmospheres of exoplanets. The foundation was set up by the Norwegian-American physicist and philanthropist Fred Kavli in 2000.
Since the first planet around other stars was spotted in the 1990s, new techniques and telescopes have helped discover more than 5000 exoplanets to date. Spectroscopic measurements of the chemical compositions in the atmospheres of some exoplanets have also been made, revealing whether they are suitable for life. Such methods can detect atomic and molecular species in planetary atmospheres around both giant and rocky planets.
The characterization of exoplanet atmospheres is still a developing field but it is one that both Charbonneau and Seager have pioneered. In 1999, Charbonneau led the team that used the transit method – a technique that measures the tiny amount of light blocked by such a planet as it passes in front of its host star – to discover a giant exoplanet HD 209458b.
In the early 2000s, he then pioneered the use of space-based observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, to perform the first studies of the atmosphere of giant extrasolar planets. This involved taking molecular spectra using both filtered starlight and infrared emission from the planets themselves.
Seager, meanwhile, pioneered the theoretical study of planetary atmospheres and predicted the presence of atomic and molecular species that should be detectable by transit spectroscopy, notably the alkali gases. She improved our knowledge of planets with masses below Neptune while finding that higher-mass variants are dominated by hydrogen and helium. Seager also provided new concepts for our understanding of the habitable zone, where liquid water can exist, and thus established the importance of a variety of biomarkers such as oxygen, ozone and carbon dioxide.
Exciting opportunities ahead
Seager told Physics World she is “absolutely thrilled” to receive the prize with Charbonneau. “It’s a significant milestone that exoplanets are recognized with this award for the first time,” she says. “With the James Webb Space Telescope operational and continuous discoveries about exoplanet atmospheres, our field is thriving. I am most looking forward to the future when we can identify a true Earth twin, an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star.”
Charbonneau, meanwhile, told Physics World that receiving the news was “wonderful” not just for him but the “entire community of exoplanet explorers”. “Research in exoplanets has been such an adventure,” he says. “We are constantly finding new worlds and developing new tools to learn about these worlds.”
He adds that the next “exciting opportunity” in the field is to study terrestrial worlds. “Recently some very nearby examples have been discovered orbiting small stars, which makes them accessible to our current telescopes,” he notes. “So the question is, are these indeed Earth-like, with atmospheres and oceans and even a moon, or not? And we can hope to learn the answers in only a few years.”
The United Nations (UN) has officially declared 2025 to be the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ). Agreed by its general assembly, the year-long worldwide celebration will highlight the impact and contribution of quantum science. It also aims to ensure that all nations have equal access to quantum education and opportunities. An opening ceremony is expected to take place on 14 January in Berlin.
In May 2023 the executive board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) endorsed a resolution encouraging an official UN quantum year. That was followed by an endorsement at the UNESCO general conference last November. In May, Ghana submitted a draft resolution for the official proclamation of the IYQ in 2025 to the UN General Assembly. It was supported by more than 70 countries and the resolution was approved by the general assembly on 7 June.
“Through this proclamation, we will bring quantum [science] education and research to young people in Africa and developing countries around the world with the hope of inspiring the next generation of scientists,” notes Riche-Mike Wellington, chief programme specialist at the Ghana Commission for UNESCO and the Ghanaian representative for IYQ. The IYQ consortium will now organize regional, national and international outreach events and activities throughout 2025 to celebrate and develop quantum science.
“Inventions such as magnetic resonance imaging in hospitals, lasers, solar cells and the smallest chips as the basic building blocks of computers all owe their existence to quantum mechanics,” says DPG president Klaus Richter, a condensed-matter physicist from the University of Regensburg. “These and other quantum technologies give new impetus to our economic development and influence numerous areas of everyday life. Quantum mechanics is a prime example of the practical impact that an abstract physical theory can have.”
The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the first science results from its €1.4bn Euclid mission. Today, the space agency has released five spectacular images of the cosmos along with 10 scientific papers as part of Euclid’s early release observations.
Euclid was launched in July 2023 and is currently located in a spot in space called Lagrange Point 2 – a gravitational balance point some 1.5 million kilometres beyond the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The Euclid Consortium comprises some 2600 members from more than 15 countries.
Euclid has a 1.2 m-diameter telescope, a camera and a spectrometer that it uses to plot a 3D map of the distribution of more than two billion galaxies. The images it takes are about four times as sharp as current ground-based telescopes.
In November, following weeks of calibrations, Euclid released its first full-colour images of the cosmos. Then in early 2024 it began science operations, studying 17 astronomical objects including distance galaxies and nearby dust clouds.
The images and resulting science findings released today were produced with only a single day of observations. They reveal 11 million objects in visible light and a further five million in the infrared. Some of the new discoveries include free-floating newborn planets, newly identified extragalactic star clusters and new low-mass dwarf galaxies.
The five images include a breathtaking image of Messier 78, which is a star nursery that is enveloped in interstellar dust and lies some 1300 light-years away in the Orion constellation. This marks the first time that the region has been taken as this width and depth.
“It’s no exaggeration to say that the results we’re seeing from Euclid are unprecedented,” says ESA science director Carole Mundell. “Euclid’s first images, published in November, clearly illustrated the telescope’s vast potential to explore the dark Universe, and this second batch is no different.
The other four images released today are shown below.
Galaxy cluster Abell 2390
Galaxy cluster Abell 2390 (courtesy: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J-C Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
This image of galaxy cluster Abell 2390, which lies 2.7 billion light-years away in the Pegasus constellation, reveals more than 50,000 galaxies. This giant conglomeration of galaxies contains a huge amount of mass, much of it being in the form of dark matter. This makes the cluster an ideal place to study the dark universe.
Galaxy cluster Abell 2764
Galaxy cluster Abell 2764 (courtesy: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J-C Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
This image shows the galaxy cluster Abell 2764 (top right), which lies a billion light-years away in the direction of the Pheonix constellation. It comprises hundreds of galaxies within a vast halo of dark matter. Also seen here is a very bright foreground star, known as V*BP-Phoenicis, which lies within our own galaxy and is almost bright enough to be seen by the human eye.
Galaxy NGC 6744
Galaxy NGC 674 (courtesy: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J-C Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
NGC 6744, which lies some 30 million light-years away, is a typical example of the kind of galaxy that is currently forming most of the stars in our local Universe. Euclid’s large field-of-view covers the entire galaxy, capturing not only spiral structure on larger scales but also smaller details such as lanes of dust emerging from “spurs” from the spiral arms. The dataset will allow Euclid to identify clusters of old stars and search for new dwarf galaxies.
Dorado galaxy group
Dorado galaxy group (courtesy: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J-C Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
Euclid captures galaxies evolving and merging ‘in action’ in the Dorado galaxy group, which lies some 62 million light-years away. As Dorado is a lot younger than other clusters, several of its constituent galaxies are forming stars and are still interacting with each other. Scientists are using these images to study how galaxies evolve and collide over time.
Tackling the big questions
Over the coming six years, Euclid will continue to study the large-scale structure of the universes, creating the largest cosmic 3D map ever made, with the aim of understanding how the universe evolved following the Big Bang.
"This space telescope intends to tackle the biggest open questions in cosmology,” notes Euclid project scientist Valeria Pettorino. “And these early observations clearly demonstrate that Euclid is more than up to the task.”
Euclid's next data release will focus on its primary science objectives and is currently slated for March 2025 with a wider data release scheduled for June 2026.
Open to all: the new Physics Inclusion Award will be open to universities in the UK and Ireland. (Courtesy: iStock/Angelina Bambina)
The Institute of Physics (IOP) has launched a new award to help universities attract, support and retain a diverse physics community. The Physics Inclusion Award will encompass several aspects of diversity such as race and ethnicity, neurodiversity and sexual orientation.
It replaces the long-established Project Juno, which rewarded university physics departments and organizations that showed they had taken action to address gender equality.
Project Juno was originally set up after the IOP examined the challenges facing UK university departments in the mid-2000s. Over the last 15 years, the number of women physics professors at UK universities has doubled, with women now making up a quarter of academic staff. But there remain many parts of the population that are under-represented in physics. Less than 1% of university physics staff, for example, are Black.
A steering group, chaired by University of Birmingham theoretical physicist Nicola Wilkin, began work on the new award in 2021. A pilot scheme ran from September 2023 to January 2024 involving staff from 11 physics departments in the UK and Ireland. They worked through a Physics Inclusion Award self-assessment tool, reviewed the effectiveness of the award criteria and took part in feedback sessions with the IOP.
“Building upon the success of Project Juno, [the new award] widens our offer to anyone who faces barriers because of who they are or where they come from – so that everyone is welcomed and included in physics”, says the IOP president, atomic physicist Keith Burnett. “To realize the incredible potential physics offers society, we need a growing, diverse, sustainable physics community which drives the physics of today and attracts the generation of tomorrow.”
Applications for the new award will open in late 2024.
Researchers are divided over whether artificial intelligence (AI) is having a positive or negative impact on peer review. That is according to a new report from IOP Publishing, which looks at scientists’ perception and experiences of peer review. The study also finds that interest in a paper and the reputation of the journal remain the most important factors for researchers when considering whether to peer review an article.
Entitled State of Peer Review 2024, the report is based on a survey of more than 3000 researchers from over 100 countries. IOP Publishing carried out a similar survey in 2020 but researchers' growing use of AI tools since then to write or augment peer-review reports has raised various ethical issues. In particular, there are questions over data protection, confidentiality and the accuracy of reviewer reports.
IOP Publishing, which publishes Physics World, currently does not allow the use of generative AI to “write or augment” peer-review reports or for AI tools to be named as authors on manuscripts. Instead, it encourages authors to be “open and transparent” about their use of such tools in their work. However, publishers do not yet have a way to accurately detect whether text has been generated by AI.
About 35% of respondents to the survey think that open-source generative AI tools such as ChatGPT will harm peer review, while 36% say it will have no impact. Just 29% believe AI can benefit scholarly communication. When asked to expand on their responses, researchers admit that such tools can provide some "useful outputs". However, they warn that expert human verification and editing is vital before AI-generated text can be used in peer review.
The study also looks at how much peer review researchers carry out, finding that 30% of reviewers from high-income countries say they receive too many peer-review requests, compared with just 10% from low and middle-income countries. Moreover, 28% of senior researchers also say they get too many requests to peer review, compared to just 7% of PhD students and 9% of postdocs.
“Quality peer review is essential to the integrity and validity of science and relies on reviewers who are engaged, motivated and competent at providing constructive feedback,” says Laura Feetham-Walker, peer review engagement manager at IOP Publishing. “The insights we gain from this survey helps us to ensure we can continue to evolve the support we provide to the global reviewer community to help with their important work.”
Now researchers at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), have taken it a whole new level by forming a research institute dedicated to the science of the perfect brew.
The Coffee Center will be used by more than 50 researchers and includes labs dedicated to brewing, “sensory and cupping” and the chemical analysis of coffee.
The centre has its origins in a 2013 course on “the design of coffee” by UC Davis chemical engineers William Ristenpart and Tonya Kuhl.
Two years later and a coffee lab at the university was established and in 2022 construction began on the Coffee Center, which was funded with $6m from private donors.
The official opening on 3 May was attended by over 200 people, who were treated to bean roasting and espresso brewing demonstrations.
“Think of this center as a hub of all things coffee,” noted UC Davies chancellor Gary May at the opening. “Together, we bring rigorous coffee science and cutting-edge technology to the world stage.”
The DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego has completed eight months of upgrades that will allow researchers to better control and study fusion plasmas.
DIII-D is the largest magnetic-fusion facility in the US and is used by more than 700 researchers at 100 institutions worldwide. The DIII-D tokamak is a donut-shaped vacuum chamber that is surrounded by electromagnets that confine a plasma at a temperatures exceeding 10 times that of the Sun, enough to fuse hydrogen to produce energy.
Since July 2023, engineers and technicians have installed new systems to better control the fusion plasma. This includes a range of new diagnostic instruments as well as enhancements to the way that the plasma is heated.
Another change is to the tokamak’s divertor system, which removes exhaust heat and impurities from the tokamak. Engineers have installed a new configuration called a “shape and volume rise” divertor, which consists of a series of modular divertor configurations that the DIII-D will now test when experiments start up later this month.
The new divertor will allow plasma shapes to be studied that are expected to produce high fusion power performance but were not possible with DIII-D’s previous divertor geometry.
Work on the upgraded facility is also expected to support experiments that will be performed at the ITER experimental fusion reactor, which is currently being built in Cadarache, France.
“The upgrades provide us with exciting new capabilities and key enhancements,” notes DIII-D director Richard Buttery. “Our scientists will be able to use our upgraded systems and diagnostics to answer key questions on commercial industry–relevant technology, materials, and operations”.
China has successfully launched a mission to bring back sample from the far side of the Moon – the first attempt to do so. Chang’e-6 was launched at 17:27 p.m. local time today by a Long March 5 rocket from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island. If the landing is successful, the craft is expected to collect and return to Earth up to 2 kg of soil from an area not previously sampled.
Most of the returned samples are stored at the National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, with possible access by foreign scientists through collaboration with Chinese colleagues.
To the dark side
Chang’e-6 was built as a back-up for Chang’e-5, but following the success of that mission Chang’e-6 was repurposed for its own assignment.
Weighing 8.2 tonnes, Chang’e-6 consists of four parts: an ascender, lander, returner and orbiter. Upon entering orbit around the Moon, the ascender and lander will separate and touch down in the southern part of the Apollo crater, which lies in the northeastern side of the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
The lander will use a panoramic camera, spectrometer and ground-penetrating radar among other payloads to document the landing site. Chang'e-6 also carries payloads from France, Italy, Sweden and Pakistan, which includes an instrument to measure surface levels of radon.
Within 48 hours after touching down, Chang'e-6 will use a robotic arm to scoop up small rocks from the surface and drill up to 2 m into the ground with the aim to collect about 2 kg of material.
The ascender will lift off from the top of the lander and dock with the returner-orbiter in orbit. The sample container is then transferred to the returner, which will head back to the Earth.
A relay satellite – Queqiao-2 – was launch in March to help communications between Chang’e-6 and ground stations on Earth.
It is hoped that the returned samples will shed light on the early evolution of the Moon given that the far side is not as extensively covered by ancient lava flows as the near side, which helps to preserves materials from the Moon's early formation. It is also hoped that the results from the mission will provide clues to why the two sides are so different.
China plans two further lunar missions, with Chang'e-7 in 2026 that will explore the lunar south pole for water, followed by Chang’e-8 in 2028 that will build a rudimentary outpost on the Moon in collaboration with Russia.
China then aims to put astronauts on the Moon by 2030, some four years after the US Artemis crewed mission to the Moon, which is currently planned for September 2026.
Following almost three decades of planning and construction the world’s highest observatory has begun operations. The University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO), which is located at an altitude of 5640 m on the summit of Cerro Chajnantor at Atacama in northern Chile, officially opened today. The infrared telescope will be used to better our understanding of the universe as well as the origin of life.
At such a height, the clear skies and little water vapour in the atmosphere make Atacama one of the best places in the world for ground-based infra-red astronomy. Built by the University of Tokyo, the telescope, which can be remotely controlled, includes a 6.5 m primary mirror that has been developed at Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona.
The observatory features two spectrographic instruments. The Simultaneous-color Wide-field Infrared Multi-object Spectrograph (SWIMS) will cover a wavelength range of 0.9 to 2.5 micrometres to observe a large areas of the sky. SWIMS will be used to study galaxies as well at the evolution of supermassive black holes that exist at their centres.
The Mid-Infrared Multimode Imager for gaZing at the UnKnown Universe (MIMIZUKU), meanwhile, will operate between 2-38 micrometres. MIMIZUKU will be used to better understand the chemical nature of organic dust in the universe, which can reveal details about the evolution of different materials, including those that led to the creation of life.
Takashi Miyata, from the University of Tokyo who is managing the observatory’s construction, has been working on the TAO for over 20 years and says he is “very excited” about the start of observations.
“Thanks to the height and arid environment, TAO will be the only ground-based telescope in the world capable of clearly viewing mid-infrared wavelengths,” he adds. “This area of the spectrum is extremely good for studying the environments around stars, including planet-forming regions”.
Given the issues working at such an altitude, Yuzuru Yoshii from the Univeristy of Tokyo notes that construction “was an incredible challenge”. He adds there were also political issues that had to be respected.
“I have liaised with Indigenous peoples to ensure their rights and views are considered, the Chilean government to secure permission, local universities for technical collaboration, and even the Chilean Health Ministry to make sure people can work at that altitude in a safe manner,” notes Yoshii. “Thanks to all involved, research I’ve only ever dreamed about can soon become a reality, and I couldn’t be happier.”
The US Department of Energy has given the green light for the next stage of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). Known as “critical decision 3A”, the move allows officials to purchase “long-lead procurements” such as equipment, services and materials before assembling the collider can begin.
The EIC, costing between $1.7bn and $2.8bn, will be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York. This will involve the lab revamping its existing 3.8 km-long Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider accelerator complex that collides heavy nuclei such as gold and copper to produce a quark–gluon plasma.
A major part of the upgrade will involve adding an electron ring so that the EIC consists of two intersecting accelerators – one producing an intense beam of electrons and the other a high-energy beam of protons or heavier atomic nuclei.
Each high-luminosity beam will be steered into head-on collisions with the particles produced providing clues to the internal nature of protons and their components.
“Passing this milestone and getting these procurements under way will help us achieve our ultimate goal of efficiently delivering a unique high-energy, high-luminosity polarized beam electron–ion collider that will be one of the most challenging and exciting accelerator complexes ever built,” notes EIC project director Jim Yeck. Construction is expected to start in 2026 with first experiments beginning in the first half of the next decade.
Meanwhile, the UK has said it will provide £58.4m ($73.8) to develop new detector and accelerator infrastructure for the EIC. The money comes as part of a £473m package of spending by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Infrastructure Fund.
This money also includes £125m for a new diffraction and imaging electron microscopy facility at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Daresbury Laboratory. The facility, known as Relativistic Ultrafast Electron Diffraction and Imaging, will be the world’s most powerful microscope for imaging dynamics being able to study biological and chemical processes in “real time” at the femtosecond timescale.
You may remember the recent news that it only takes three fish to make up a school.
Well now comes more vertebrata developments thanks to researchers at Johns Hopkins University who have studied the noise that a swimming school makes as it moves in unison.
It is already well known that fish swim in groups to avoid predators, but wouldn’t all that commotion lead to increased noise and thus attract the nearest big fish? To find out, the researchers created a 3D model of between one and nine swimming mackerel.
As well as different numbers of fish, they also modelled varying swimming formations, how close they swam to each another and the degree to which their movements matched their nearest neighbour.
The team found that a school of fish moving together in just the right way – flapping their tail fins at alternate times rather than in unison -- was incredibly effective at reducing noise, so much so that the sound that a school of seven fish produced was the same as a single fish (Bioinspir. Biomim.doi.org:10.1088/1748-3190/ad3a4e).
It also resulted in the fish swimming faster while using less energy. “A predator, such as a shark, may perceive it as hearing a lone fish instead of a group,” notes Johns Hopkins mechanical engineer Rajat Mittal. “This could have significant implications for prey fish.”
The team now plan to increase the complexity of the models to include ocean turbulence to reveal more sea-crets of schooling fish.
Connexion
