Figure 1: The Z-machine. Click here for a finer image (1.7 MB).
In fact, if their projects work out right and some good amount of engineering work is added, the news from their lab may become more important than the news from ITER or other big fusion experimental projects.
The Z-machine at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico - see the picture and click it - was able to heat up their plasma to two billions Kelvin degrees (translation for European readers: two milliards Celsius degrees) which is hotter than the stars. The success published as an article in the February 24th issue of Physical Review Letters (volume 96, No. 7) that most of us no longer read may open a way to build small and cheap power plants. On the theoretical side, they may have mimicked the superhot solar flares.
The lab argues that they have spent 14 months by spectroscopic tests and successful computer simulations by John Apruzese et al. The energy emitted in the form of X-rays exceeded the input kinetic energy by a factor of four, they argue.
Read stories at news.google.com although most of the news are probably just reductions of their own press release that you obtain by click the picture above. Or try to read the PRL article linked above.
