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​Hutch Neilson, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory's (PPPL's) head of Advanced Projects, is saying "auf wiedersehen" to the lab for the next nine months as he travels to Greifswald, Germany, where he will be paving the way for future US researchers to participate on the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) program as the experiment begins preparing for operations next year.

David Gates, a principal research physicist and the stellarator physics leader at PPPL, will be serving as Interim Head of Advanced Projects in Neilson's absence.

Neilson's new position comes after the US Department of Energy and the European Atomic Energy Commission signed an agreement in June establishing a long-term partnership with the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) and PPPL, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. The agreement names PPPL as the lead institute for the US collaboration on the W7-X.

Read more on the PPPL website.

​At the onset of the atomic age, governments on both sides of the iron curtain sought to harness the power of nuclear fusion. Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey stood at the forefront of the American effort when, in 1953, they began using Stellarators — one of the earliest controlled fusion systems.

Early fusion research in the western world nearly immediately split into two halves after the end of WWII, with one subset of researchers observing super-compressed fusion materials at very short timescales, the others — including Dr. Lyman Spitzer, chair of the Department of Astronomy at Princeton University — observing these materials at a lower compression for longer times. Spitzer's invention served this purpose wonderfully. The Stellarator that Spitzer invented in 1950 is designed to hold superheated, electrically-charged plasma — a most vital and basic component of nuclear fusion research — within a designated field using electromagnetic currents.

Read more on the Gizmodo web site.

​Ed Moses, a longtime scientific leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has been appointed by the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) as president of their organization, effective 2 October 2014.

"Ed is ideally positioned and qualified for this scientific leadership role," Goldstein said. "He is an expert in laser science, optical systems, technology development, systems engineering and project leadership and management. Ed has played key roles in major LLNL programs over the last 35 years including Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation, Peregrine, the National Ignition Facility and the National Ignition Campaign."

"He also was responsible for building several major science and DOD work-for-other programs," Goldstein said. "Ed is an international leader in fusion energy science and applications. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and member of many other professional societies, and a winner of a broad spectrum of prestigious awards."

Source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

​Scientists have long believed that the power of the sun comes largely from the fusion of protons into helium, but now they can finally prove it. An international team of researchers using a detector buried deep below the mountains of central Italy has detected neutrinos—ghostly particles that interact only very reluctantly with matter—streaming from the heart of the sun. Other solar neutrinos have been detected before, but these particular ones come from the key proton-proton fusion reaction that is the first part of a chain of reactions that provides 99% of the sun's power.

The results also show that the sun is a remarkably steady power source. Neutrinos take only 8 minutes to get from the sun's core to Earth, so the rate of neutrino production that the team detected reflects the amount of heat the sun is producing today. It just so happens that this is the same as the amount of energy now being radiated from the sun's surface, even though those photons have taken 100,000 years to work their way from the core to the surface. Hence, the sun's energy production hasn't changed in 100 millennia. "This is direct proof of the stability of the sun over the past 100,000 years or so," says team member Andrea Pocar of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.   Read more on Science website