📌 TOPINDIATOURS Eksklusif ai: Scientists Invent Room Temperature Ice Hari Ini

Scientists have created a new phase of ice that can form at room temperature.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal Nature Materials, the new phase, dubbed XXI, requires extreme levels of pressure to form. As its name suggests, it’s the twenty-first form of ice to have been identified, joining a fascinating array of other structures ranging from hexagonal and cubic to superionic, which can be found on the surface of gas and ice giants like Neptune or Uranus.

The finding shows just how many phases of water’s solid state there really are — and how much there’s still to learn about the extremely abundant stuff. The research could even help explain how extraterrestrial forms of ice found on distant moons came to be.

The research is a collaboration between Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) researcher Geun Woo Lee and scientists at the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Facility (XFEL), the world’s largest X-ray laser, and the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) Research Center.

XXI ice forms when water is rapidly compressed to extraordinary levels at room temperature. It’s only stable under extremely specific conditions.

It’s a major outlier in the group of almost two dozen forms of ice known to us, as most of them form at either high or low temperatures, according to a writeup of the research.

“Rapid compression of water allows it to remain liquid up to higher pressures, where it should have already crystallized to ice VI,” Lee explained, referring to a phase that is believed to be found in the interior of icy moons Titan and Ganymede.

Put differently, XXI appears to be one possible intermediary stage between water and the exotic phase of ice found on distant icy moons.

Using a diamond anvil cell, a high-pressure device that has been used in materials science to recreate pressures present deep inside planets, the team observed what happened when water was put under two gigapascals of pressure, or roughly 20,000 times atmospheric air pressure.

They then released the pressure over one second to see how the crystalline structures would react, before repeating the process hundreds of times.

Despite being at room temperature, the water’s molecules packed together to form ice, albeit in a much more tightly packed structure.

The team then used the XFEL to capture images of the sample every microsecond, the equivalent of capturing footage with a high-speed camera, to watch how the ice structure formed.

“With the unique X-ray pulses of the European XFEL, we have uncovered multiple crystallization pathways in H2O which was rapidly compressed and decompressed over 1000 times using a dynamic diamond anvil cell,” Lee explained.

“Our findings suggest that a greater number of high-temperature metastable ice phases and their associated transition pathways may exist, potentially offering new insights into the composition of icy moons,” coauthor and DESY researcher Rachel Husband added.

More on water ice: NASA’s James Webb Telescope Just Found Frozen Water Around Another Star

The post Scientists Invent Room Temperature Ice appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Breaking ai: Nuclear fusion reactor’s plasma control: US firm team

US-based nuclear fusion firm Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has collaborated with Google’s DeepMind division to use artificial intelligence to fine-tune and enhance the operation of its forthcoming SPARC fusion reactor.

The partnership aims to accelerate the path to commercial fusion energy by using AI to simulate and improve control of the superhot plasma that will fuel the machine.

The plan involves using DeepMind’s specialized, open-source software known as Torax to model the plasma inside the SPARC reactor, which is located at CFS headquarters in Devens, Massachusetts. 

By pairing Torax with advanced AI models, the companies will explore the most effective ways to run the machine, potentially making future commercial fusion power plants, called ARC, more efficient and economical.

“It’s a big deal. AI tools carry serious potential to accelerate learning on SPARC and then to push toward making our ARC fusion power plants more efficient and economical,” said the energy firm in a press release.

“And that acceleration could dramatically boost fusion energy’s positive impact on the world.”

Building on existing relationship

This collaboration builds on an existing relationship between the two companies. Google is an investor in CFS and has previously agreed to purchase 200 megawatts of power from the first ARC power plant, expected in the early 2030s.

The AI approach will use reinforcement learning, a technique famously used by DeepMind’s AlphaGo program. The AI will explore numerous operational settings for SPARC—such as fueling rates, radio-frequency heating, and electrical currents in its powerful electromagnets—and will be “rewarded” for finding configurations that maximize performance while maintaining safe operational limits.

This is not DeepMind’s first venture into fusion research. The AI team previously used reinforcement learning to successfully control the magnets and explore new plasma configurations in the Tokamak à Configuration Variable (TCV) research machine at the Swiss Plasma Center.

Key component of project

For SPARC, the AI could be used in advance planning to map out operations or be integrated directly into the control system during live operations. It could also help manage the intense heat exhaust in a region of the machine called the divertor by precisely controlling the plasma’s shape.

The Torax software is a key component of the project. Released in 2024, it provides a modern framework that can link multiple AI tools and computing engines, greatly speeding up complex plasma simulations that previously relied on a patchwork of different software.

CFS is developing a more compact and economical type of tokamak reactor by using innovative high-temperature superconducting magnets, which can create much stronger magnetic fields than conventional designs.

The company believes that applying advanced AI will add another layer of computing power to further accelerate the development of clean, affordable fusion energy.

“CFS has already benefited from sophisticated modeling to design SPARC,” concluded the press release.

“Now AI could add another layer of computing power — and another avenue to take fusion energy to the next level.”

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com