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COVID-19 IEEE Resources

Your IEEE resources on the COVID-19 crisis

1 min read

As we weather the COVID-19 pandemic together, check here for updates about IEEE members developing technologies to fight the virus, the resources available to you from across IEEE, coping strategies from engineers around the world, and opportunities to get involved in the fight.


NASA’s New Shortcut to Fusion Power

Lattice confinement fusion eliminates massive magnets and powerful lasers

11 min read
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An illustration of the shuttle with payload doors open and a Sun hovering over it.
Edmon de Haro
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Physicists first suspected more than a century ago that the fusing of hydrogen into helium powers the sun. It took researchers many years to unravel the secrets by which lighter elements are smashed together into heavier ones inside stars, releasing energy in the process. And scientists and engineers have continued to study the sun’s fusion process in hopes of one day using nuclear fusion to generate heat or electricity. But the prospect of meeting our energy needs this way remains elusive.

The extraction of energy from nuclear fission, by contrast, happened relatively quickly. Fission in uranium was discovered in 1938, in Germany, and it was only four years until the first nuclear “pile” was constructed in Chicago, in 1942.

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