A female physicist is designing a new fusion rocket that could take the first humans to Mars

Professor Fatima Ebrahimi, who works for the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) of the U.S. Department of Energy, has created a new fusion rocket that could one day take humans to Mars.

The machine uses magnetic fields to fire plasma particles from the back of the rocket and guide the craft through space.

Using magnetic fields allows scientists to tailor the amount of space for a particular mission and astronauts alter the amount of effort as they experiment with a distant world.

Ebrahimi’s innovation would also bring space-balancing heroes to the Red Planet 10 times faster than conventional rocket launchers that use electric fields to control the grains.

‘I’ve been cooking this idea for a while,’ said Ebrahimi.

‘I had the idea in 2017 while I was sitting on a deck and thinking about the similarities between car digging and the high-speed exhaust particles. ‘

‘When it works, this tokamak produces magnetic bubbles called plasmoids that move at about 20 kilometers per second, which looked like a thrush to me.’

Fusion is the power that drives the sun and stars, and combines light elements in the form of plasma.

Plasma is a hot, charged state of matter made up of free electrons and atomic nuclei that represent 99 percent of the visible universe – and are capable of generating a lot of energy.

Scientists have been working around the clock to replicate melting in a laboratory with the hopes of using its power to generate electricity for rockets traveling through deep space.

Conventional plasma smears that use electric fields to move the particles can only achieve a certain low motion or speed.

But computer simulations performed on PPPL computers and the National Power Research Scientific Computing Center, DOE Science Office User Resource at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, showed that the new plasma thrush concept can be generated by speed hundreds of kilometers each in second place, 10 times faster than those of other thrushes.

That faster speed at the start of a spacecraft’s journey could bring the outer planets into the reach of astronauts, Ebrahimi said.

‘Long-distance travel takes months or years because the specific thrust of chemical rocket engines is very low, so the craft will take time to get up to speed,’ she said.

‘But if we do missiles based on magnetic reconnection, we might be able to complete long-distance missions in a shorter amount of time.’

While using fusion to power rockets is not a new concept, Ebrahimi thrush is different from directing mechanics in three ways.

The first is that changing the strength of the magnetic fields can increase or decrease the amount of stress, allowing better movement through the dark mass that is in place.

By using more electromagnets and more magnetic fields, you can twist a knot to adjust the speed, ’Ebrahimi said.

Second, the new thrush produces movement by emitting both plasma particles and magnetic bubbles called plasmoids.

The plasmoids power the movement and no other macular degeneration concept is introduced.

However, the final difference between Ebrahimi’s concept and others is that it uses magnetic fields to fire out plasma particles from the back of the rocket – space-determined devices using fields. electricity.

Using magnetic fields can be a game changer, as it allows scientists to make as much effort for a specific mission.

‘While other thrushes require heavy gas, made with atoms such as xenon, in this concept you can use any type of gas you want,’ said Ebrahimi. Scientists may prefer light gas in some cases because the smaller atoms can move faster.