The Speculist

Pictured above is "The Z Machine." This x-ray genterator was built originally to gather data about the shelf life of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. After several upgrades, it has become something more. It is the best hope of the U.S. in the race for fusion.

Scientists and theoreticians estimated that for high-yield fusion to be achieved inside the Machine, it would need to generate something over 1,000 trillion watts.

Z Machine scientists have been pushing up the power generated by this machine for twenty-five years. In 1998 they were roughly a third of the way to the fusion threshold - 290 trillion watts.

But news published yesterday indicates that scientists may have overestimated the fusion threshold. Perhaps we don't need 1,000 trillion watts.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Sandia's Z machine has produced plasmas that exceed temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin -- hotter than the interiors of stars.

...

Z's energies in these experiments raised several questions.

First, the radiated x-ray output was as much as four times the expected kinetic energy input.

Ordinarily, in non-nuclear reactions, output energies are less -- not greater -- than the total input energies. More energy had to be getting in to balance the books, but from where could it come?

Second, and more unusually, high ion temperatures were sustained after the plasma had stagnated -- that is, after its ions had presumably lost motion and therefore energy and therefore heat -- as though yet again some unknown agent was providing an additional energy source to the ions.

One explanation is that fusion is taking place. This could mean that fusion reactors could be made smaller, cheaper, and sooner than theorized in the past.

It has also been proposed that The Z Machine be used to test that strange Burkhard Heim theory that could lead to a hyperspace drive for intersteller travel. And doesn't that machine just look like it belongs in the Starship Enterprise?

H/T to Al Fin.

UPDATE: Here's another article on proposed Hyperspace testing and the Z-machine.

It's a little lame that it says "The so-called Z-machine is being built by the American National Laboratory Sandia." The Z-machine has been operational since 1980. The writer was probably confused by the fact that the machine is constantly being upgraded and modified.