Thor’s hammer to crush materials at 1 million atmospheresSophisticated features may influe
Thor’s hammer to crush materials at 1 million atmospheresSophisticated features may influence eventual Z-machine rebuildA new Sandia National Laboratories accelerator called Thor is expected to be 40 times more efficient than Sandia’s Z machine, the world’s largest and most powerful pulsed-power accelerator, in generating pressures to study materials under extreme conditions.“Thor’s magnetic field will reach about one million atmospheres, about the pressures at Earth’s core,” said David Reisman, lead theoretical physicist of the project.Though unable to match Z’s 5 million atmospheres, the completed Thor will be smaller – 2,000 rather than 10,000 square feet – and will be considerably more efficient due to design improvements that use hundreds of small capacitors instead of Z’s few large ones.Remarkable structural transformationThis change resembles the transformation of computer architecture in which a single extremely powerful computer chip was replaced with many relatively simple chips working in unison, or to the evolution from several high-voltage vacuum tubes to computers powered by a much larger number of low-voltage solid-state switches.Read more. -- source link
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