Technology

Beaming Data across the Cosmos

Designer Isotopes

Rare-isotope research brings supernova processes down to Earth.

A new line of rare-isotope facilities, due to open in the next eight years in locations around Europe and North America, will collide atoms at high speeds to make them radioactive. The goal is to jumpstart processes that do not now take place anywhere on Earth, but that are commonplace in the cores of exploding stars.

The stellar collisions create isotopes, which are variations of the original atoms plus or minus a few neutrons. The new facilities will enable astronomers and astrophysicists to work directly with elements they could never get hold of until now.

The rare-isotope facilities “would extend nuclear research from the domain of stable or near-stable nuclei familiar in everyday life to nearly the full range of nuclei that exist in nature’s most exotic stellar environments,” according to the National Research Council.

These facilities might also provide more clues to what took place in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang that most scientists believe marked the emergence of the known universe.

The studies would have many earthly implications, according to Bradley Sherrill, associate director of research at the Michigan State University rare-isotope facility National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.

“If we want to understand where gold comes from, we’ve got to understand these processes that go on in stars. We know it originated in stars, we just don’t know how. These experiments with isotopes could help answer those questions,” says Sherrill.

Sherrill says that researchers of many scientific disciplines not related to space would stand to benefit. National-security experts, for example, could apply the added knowledge about atomic reactions to undertake “nuclear forensics”: If a terrorist detonates a nuclear weapon, agency researchers could identify which country supplied it.

“Hopefully no one will ever have to use it,” says Sherrill. “My hope is that it could be an important deterrent if those supplying the nuclear weapon knew that it could be identified exactly where the material came from.”

The isotope research could also help physicians find new, lower-impact ways to scan patients and treat them using particles instead of scalpels and X-rays, the NRC notes. Instead of risky surgical procedures, physicians might opt for radioadioactive “scalpels” that destroy tumors and other diseased tissue by striking them with decayed particles.

Rare-isotope facilities might also make nuclear energy safer to use. Certain high-energy neutrons destroy radioactive waste. These radiation-defusing neutrons are hard to find on earth, but replicating the processes of star cores could make rare or nonexistant particles common.

“The elements found on earth, the ones stable against weak decay, are only a small fraction of those transiently produced in stars,” the NRC states.

The U.S. Department of Energy has taken interest in rare-isotope research, but the United States is a relative latecomer to the rare-isotope game. Japan has been producing rare isotopes at its RIKEN facility since 2006. Canada, France, and Germany are all on schedule to open new isotope facilities between 2010 and 2015. —Rick Docksai

Sources: Bradley Sherrill, National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, Michigan State University, 1 Cyclotron, East Lansing, Michigan 48824-1321.

National Research Council of the National Academies, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001. Web site.
 

Beaming Data across the Cosmos

Lasers beat radio waves for speed and accuracy in communications. Data exchange between  satellites could be increased a hundredfold by using lasers instead of radio waves, according to German researchers. Laser beams are also  easier to focus than radio waves.

Data exchange requires bandwidth—the more data, the more bandwidth required. Space research and development is running up against radio waves’ bandwidth limits, making laser technology more attractive.

In the most recent satellite-to-satellite test of technologies developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT), transmission equivalent to about 400 DVDs worth of data per hour was achieved. Such rates would make it possible to transmit large data packets between satellites or between Earth and satellites.

Physical and mechanical challenges to laser-based satellite communications remain. Communications lasers in space are activated by pump modules, which must be resilient against the vibrations and forces of launches, and then survive harsh conditions in space, such as radiation and extreme temperature variations.—Cynthia G. Wagner

Source: Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology, ILT, Steinbachstrasse 15, 52074 Aachen, Germany. Web site.