NASA Lattice Confinement Fusion [2020]

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NASA Lattice Confinement Fusion [2020]

Lattice confinement is the idea of constraining smaller atoms with bigger ones.
In this case the crystalline layer of a metal is used to hold deuteron atoms, just like pouring water into sand.
For this experiment they used Erbium and Titanium at 99.9% purity. Erbium is a rare earth metal mainly found in Sweden, and it is used in optical amplification media such lens and lasers for optical fibers. It is also used in nuclear technology as control rods for neutron-absorption.
The reason they used Erbium for this experiment lies in fuel density, where it can hold about 8.1022 Deuteron atoms/cm3. It is also very stable where losses from fuel loading to testing were minimal. Lastly, it showed enhanced nuclear reactions.
A sample of Erbium is pumped with deuterium which is packed with a billion times more fuel than what magnetic confinement of tokamaks are able to constrain.
The ability to pack more atoms in a given volume, especially a billion times denser, increases the chances of deuterons hitting each other.
All you need now is a source of energy to excite the atoms and start the reaction.
In this case they blasted the sample with 2.9+Million electron Volts of gamma beam or energetic X-ray which causes the dissociation of the atom.
That is where the magic happens, this dissociation creates the necessary energetic neutrons and protons. The neutron collides with a static deuteron giving it enough energy to collide with another deuteron ultimately fusing.

Softwares Used:
Blender 2.8 EEVEE
Apple Motion
Final Cut Pro X

Sources
https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/science/lattice-confinement-fusion/
https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/TP-20205001616-Experiment-Paper-Final.pdf
https://www.iter.org/sci/FusionFuels

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer–Phillips_process
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erbium
Attribution
Kevan from London, England / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

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