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International News Networks / Re: YHK (News from Fusan)
« on: March 02, 2024, 08:42:58 AM »Asteroid Enters Lunar Orbit This Week
Heisuke Nakamura
03/02/2024
03/02/2024
NASDA has successfully placed an asteroid into lunar orbit as part of its Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization (ARU) mission on Friday, marking the beginning of its efforts to study in depth the composition of Near-Mundus Asteroids, as well as marking its first successful redirection of an asteroid. While the agency has completed other missions to asteroids, the multi-billion Mon robotic explorer, named Prosperity, carries with it a docking port and several scientific experiments that will be performed by ūchunauts in Low Mundus Orbit. Already, preparations are reportedly underway for the crew of DSP Expedition 1, which departed from Zenshoen in late February, to briefly depart the station and rendezvous with Prosperity and the asteroid, 641376 Takenaka, sometime next week. The crew will spend three days at the asteroid, where they will conduct a number of EVAs and perform experiments with the object.
As far as asteroids go, Takenaka is on the smaller end, with a maximum diameter of just under six meters. Discovered in 2011, the asteroid appears to have an intensely dark surface that is known to reflect a number of unusual colors, this being in spite of long-exposure images released by NASDA which often depict it as a gray mass. Takenaka is a C-type asteroid, something which both made it difficult to discover and which made its discovery all the more interesting to researchers on Mundus, as it means that it is a so-called "Primitive Asteroid," one which could be rich in carbon, organic materials and frozen water. That means, according to NASDA, studying the asteroid could help "clarify interactions between the building blocks of Mundus and the evolution of its oceans and life," as well as to understand more about how the solar system works. But just because the asteroid has been recovered and will be visited doesn't mean that the agency is done with them. Already, planners are considering a visit to a similar asteroid as part of Sojourner's mission to Nergal in the coming years, likely following a flyby of Ishtar on the way home. Whatever may come of those plans, one thing can be certain: the next few weeks will be quite interesting for researchers at NASDA.
Scientists, AI May Have Solved Major Challenge for Fusion
Hajime Matsui
03/02/2024
03/02/2024
Illuminating businesses and homes with the star-sustaining power of fusion will be one of the greatest engineering challenges in human history. In order to recreate the energy-generating physics at the center of our Sun—which uses a lot of gravity to squeeze atoms together—reactors on Mundus have to compensate for this lack of mass with an immense increase in heat. At around 100M °C, light nuclei in the form of an electron soup known as plasma can overcome strong electric repulsion and fuse via quantum tunneling. While that is a good thing, there is a problem involved: containing that ultra-hot plasma in the first place. That is because plasma has a tendency to escape the magnetic fields which contain it in a reactor, which immediately ends a fusion reactor when it happens. But scientists from Misaki University, as well as the Misaki Plasma Physics Laboratory (MPPL), are employing AI to avoid these plasma mishaps and hopefully keep future fusion reactions from this particular form of self-sabotage. Using Fusan's ISTX experimental fusion reactor in Katashina, researchers demonstrated that their AI model trained on experimental data could detect what are known as “tearing mode” instabilities—a type of plasma disruption when plasma-containing magnetic field lines break—sometimes as much as 300 milliseconds in advance. Although not enough time for humans to react, AI can readily change parameters to avoid the tear, and thus keep the reaction stable. The results of this work were published in the Fusanese Journal of Research (FJR) last week.
"Tearing mode instabilities are one of the major causes of plasma disruption, and they will become even more prominent as we try to run fusion reactions at the high powers required to produce enough energy,” first author Giichi Urata, a professor of Physics at Kudoyama University in Yakumo who performed the work as a postdoctoral researcher at Misaki, said in a statement. "Previous studies have generally focused on either suppressing or mitigating the effects of these tearing instabilities after they occur in the plasma, but our approach allows us to predict and avoid those instabilities before they ever appear.”
Teaching AI to control a fusion reaction is similar to how other AI models are trained for complicated tasks—a large amount of real-world data and ultra-quick pattern recognition. This AI model used a “reinforcement learning algorithm” that allowed the program to work out best containment methods via trial and error within a simulated environment. Eventually, the program learned to achieve high power output without the “punishment” of instability. Co-author Nae Sun-Yung, also a member of the Misaki group, compared training the model to learning to fly an aircraft, saying a controller needs lots of time on an intricate simulator before “they’ve learned enough to try out the real thing.”
Now that the AI has passed the real-world test with flying colors, the researchers say they need more data on the AI's performance at the ISTX reactor, and if all goes well, the team could begin training the program to recognize other fusion instabilities as well. But containing plasma in real-time is only one piece of the fusion puzzle. Engineers, for example, still need to develop new materials capable of withstanding the immense heat of fusion for not just minutes, hours, or days, but years if the technology has any hope of one day powering homes across the world. Fusion may very well be the greatest feat of engineering in human history, and it very well may also be the biggest in AI history, too.
Navy Prepares to Launch New Class of Submarine
Harunori Kōno
03/02/2024
03/02/2024
A new predator will soon stalk the world's oceans and seas, as the Imperial Fusanese Navy prepares to launch the IFN Barakuda, the lead vessel of her class, later this month. The ship, with its complement of 125 sailors, marks the culmination of a decades-long effort to field a replacement for the fleet's Itachizame-class of diesel-electric hunter-killer submarines, which were retired at the turn of the new millennium. The vessel differs from its peers in the Navy's silent service by forgoing the ability to launch missiles, instead coming equipped with an impressive arsenal of torpedoes, including both Type 69 "HATEs" and the newer Type 75 ULTRA, whose range, though not officially stated by the navy, is believed to be in excess of 65 kilometers and can carry a 405 kg explosive warhead. The submarine is expected to be launched later this month and will begin its shakedown cruise on the 17th of April, coinciding with the year's Armed Forces Day celebrations.