CER News:
CER research to be highlighted on an episode of the History Channel program "Modern Marvels", entitled "Super Hot"

5 May 2008

The History Channel recently visited the D-III tokamak plasma confinement device at General Atomics to shoot some footage for an upcoming episode of Modern Marvels, entitled "Super Hot". Movies of the plasma taken with a UCSD fast framing camera will be shown.

The movies were filmed at 26000 frames per second, and show plasma inside the DIII-D tokamak (click on the images below to view the movies, which are 4-5 MB each). One of the movies shows the end of the plasma discharge (the "plasma death" known as a disruption), when instabilities can cause a rapid loss of heat and particle confinement. Another movie shows a cryogenic deuterium pellet injected into the plasma in order to study fuelling effects. This movie is interesting because of the extreme temperature difference between the pellet (-440 F) and the plasma (over 100 million degrees F).

The show is currently scheduled for airing on June 9. For more information, contact CER researcher Jonathan Yu (jyu@ferp.ucsd.edu) or visit the Modern Marvels website.