1176. About technologies, 5
(Armylè)
The physical conditions happening inside the central sphere were intense, and partially exotic. The temperature was high but stable. Everything held.
The fusion was happening. The sensors confirmed it continuously.
They had confined their core reaction thanks to the tunnelling effect made possible by T.I.
And furthermore, much to Johann’s happiness, the energy input reached to cause the reaction had been lower than intended. The secondary signal or flavour to lower strong energy had worked. It had cost less heat to ignite the reactor.
The data were recorded and analysed in real time with clear enthusiasm. There were laughter and joy to be heard around. The mood was becoming light. A stream of data more precious than a river of gold was flowing.
The experiment was already a phenomenal success. Johann and Morhens were even applauded for a short time.
And even the grumpy doctor fending himself with a short smile.
However the shade of Prume’s smile appeared as well.
Morhens’s dropped his smile when he realised along everyone else that something was going off track, and off the charts.
The core didn’t contain enough hydrogen isotopes to proceed for a long time of fusion reactions. This wasn’t a star but a lab experiment. Fire without fuel wouldn’t last long before going colder and dying.
Yet...
Too long.
The reaction still emitted vast amount of heat, way beyond their predictions. Not all the hydrogen was meant to fuse. Their experiment was a scale study, and never had been meant to reach anywhere near a breakeven energy gain factor. They had not built any turbines to make electricity out of this heat. It was not meant to be.
Morhens saw beyond the odd duration what was happening. It was not the T.I. lowering weak interaction that was at fault here. He scrutinised the sight of the reactor core. Its temperature was now rising. The confinement was alright still. Morhens commanded to get another sight, extrapolated from the heat signatures they were getting.
They saw a reconstruction of what was still occurring in the middle.
It was no longer sparks of fusion, but the material being eaten and melting. A plasma still affected by the magnetic field but dissolving the hohlraum shell from the inside.
The eroded material was nebulised gradually and feeding the growing turbulence of plasma inside.
Which indeed refused to cool down and turn back to gaz.
The flame continued to burn, hungry, pulling its shell into consumption inside. The pressure was growing. Local points of the shell were accusing growing alterations of their mechanical stress and resilience. Aberrations were growing. It was melting where it stood, in the middle of that chamber.
Morhens and Johann checked that all the systems of their chamber were properly set to hold a plasma of this weight. It should be fine, even if they had not exactly planned for it precisely.
The sphere of dark refractory material suddenly vanished, swallowed by its yolk inside. It collapsed into the plasma.
For a moment all appeared more calm, with a levitating orb of amorphous material at immense temperature simply there. The strong electromagnetic fields kept it steady for a while.
The implosion of the still active core had already shocked the spectators.
Someone muttered that was not possible...
But then someone yelled. T.I. concentration in the chamber was rising. They detected convergent flows heading inside of it.
And before them, the corium was turning more unstable, because something else was happening.
They calculated that a growing intake of T.I. was naturally occurring inside the reactor. Even though they were not sending anything else. It was a natural attraction now occurring and increasing in pace.
It meant that a new process yet to be understood was underway. What they had formed with abundance of T.I. had become something else, now pulling more T.I. its way...
They were manufacturing an artefact, and quite an explosive kind, unbeknownst to them.
When they realised it, Morhens and Johann activated the cooling down procedures they had.
It all should have gone extinguished too many seconds ago. The growing rate of T.I. being vacuumed toward the reactor was now a very ominous discovery.
All the T.I. they had sent had a specific flavour encoded previously. It had reacted and then scattered, released back into the environment. Their detectors all around the chamber evaluated their quantities and flows through space. They weren’t stopped but merely slowed down by most solid materials.
But now they had activated something that pulled T.I. back inside, with nowhere to go and no clear way to concentrate. While heat continued to be emitted. Either the flavour had spontaneously changed, or...
- T.I... can become fuel?
Morhens mumbled something rude hearing that remark.
But indeed, in there and now, it converted entirely into photons apparently. The temperature was remaining high, while the material lost its stability. The magnetic field was losing effect or had been pushed too high inadvertnetly.
The corium blew up into a rain of plasma droplets. Beads of them began travelling and bouncing around the room at high speed. The main test chamber was now being bombarded and it was audible from the control room.
The public grew increasingly restless. They had expected everything, beside feeling in danger of death.
The rain of fiery droplet was made the room humming and vibrating. Some people were petrified. That output of energy from T.I. appeared to brush the order of magnitude from mass equivalence.
The test chamber was being eroded by the assault of the plasma beads with high kinetic energy as they cooled down, moderately. The electromagnetic field didn’t manage to keep them confined.
Morhens had an intuition and yelled to forget about the gauss to focus on T.I. instead.
The temperature had dropped below a point where hydrogen at the chamber ambient pressure had any chance to fuse into helium. They redirected T.I. and thus hydrogen inside the chamber.
No longer to feed a focal point that had now blown, but to coalesce and bring order to the plasma where magnetic field no longer did.
The beads damaging the panels gradually organised along the flow made to spin in cicle. Morhens yelled to make it rotate faster. The operators made the machines work their wonders.
The plasma droplets slowly cooling down bounced less and less. They regrouped over the invisible flow.
A ring of fiery grains formed itself, first sawing like a disc the equatorial shell of the chamber. But rapidly it shrank, contracting under the gravitational influence pulling everything back into order.
Still a little chaotic, plasma arcs erupted here and there and bounced around, but statistically it worked. The damages were serious but now control had returned.
The lead researchers activated a little late the adjustment of the chamber shape to reflect this rotating ring and adjust their magnetic field to it.
Morhens had yelled a lot of orders but now was calming.
The mechanic of the sphere had been damaged by the bombardment and it struggled to change shape at this point. The kinetic impacts more than the plasma heat had damaged the scales and their cylinders behind.
Thankfully it all had been built robustly, and ready to face the unthinkable. The scales receded behind other ones as the volume of the room was adjusted to what it confined. As much as available, the damaged skin was pulled back and the newer scales exposed inside.
The plasma donut grew a little wider erratically. It turned into an eight, untied itself and twisted around. Slowly, it lost its chaotic momentum until it reached its steadiness as a rotating ring.
It appeared unmoving, in the middle of the changing chamber.
Calm had finally returned and people could exhale.
J - In the end we did make a tokamak. I didn’t expect the magnetic field to fail so much against T.I...
G - So we could ignite a reaction, feed it and confine it, just adjusting the flavours of T.I. into a static machinery...
They were thinking aloud, fascinated by everything happening and the possibilities offered.
Everyone else was a little more shared between amazement and fear. They had been scared, but they also could see the possibility.
Still, they were a little nervous and tired now. Morhens especially. Johann still looked at the screen with fascination when the doctor was now showing a tired face.
G - Good... Keep that ring of plasma steady until it cools down and dies off.
- But why hasn’t it yet?
G - Perhaps the flavour of T.I. that reduces strong interaction also can decay itself into photons and other stuff when its under these temperatures... An influence over plasmas that remains to be defined at these scales. Anyway, watch over that and make sure nothing else enters the chamber before extinction.
They nodded their understanding. Morhens pushed a few things and sheets onto Johann and left the room.
Johann turned back toward the spectators still waiting for some more answers, in good and bad ways.
~
Johann oversaw the conclusion of the experiment with the team at the heart of it.
The shielding and control were attuned more cleanly to the materials slowly cooling down and falling. The control of T.I. was refined as well inside and outside the test chamber.
When things were slower and most people had already left, Johann got himself a cup of coffee and enjoyed the show of the twirling plasma toroid over the screens.
He really enjoyed the show. They were going to revolutionize plasma technology, and then energy, and then...
It was wonderful...
The ring of fire lasted for a few more minutes before it entirely cooled down into dusts. The sublimated material from the heart had been scattered around the damaged test chamber. Now that things had cooled down, they could plan the cleaning and repairs.
Johann was moderately concerned about the drawbacks from the incident. Even if the costs and time for repairs would unfortunately be extensive again. In exchange, they were still promising something greater, and the council would continue to follow.
T.I. promised new ignition processes, new maintain and fuelling, new containment, everything... The efficiency ratio had gone through the roof and unexpected materials had molten. T.I. appeared as a nearly limitless energy source and catalyst.
Each experiment opened more doors than it concluded others, and Johann enjoyed that very much.
The Terra Incognita was always wider to explore and discover. He liked it and could tell this most likely was what drove Morhens too.
For Morhens, there was joy indeed.
He smiled.
He was happy.
~
