Physicists from the United States have for the first time fully reproduced the first ever fusion experiment conducted in 1938 by physicist Arthur Ruhlig. The experiment was inadvertently forgotten by the scientific community, but has now been confirmed and detailed in a new scientific paper published in the journal Physical Review C.
A team of researchers led by Duke University professor Werner Tornow has uncovered archival materials and scientific publications relating to the early stages of the Manhattan Project, which found the Ruhlig Report. In his 1938 paper, he described experiments to collide the nuclei of deuterium and tritium, heavy isotopes of hydrogen, and hypothesized that the result was the formation of helium-4 and the release of neutrons.
Initially, the scientific world disregarded Rulig's publication, attributing the primacy of fusion research to Emil Konopinski and other members of the Manhattan Project, who had conducted a similar experiment in 1943. Reanalysis showed that Rulig's theory was correct, although it slightly overestimated the frequency of reactions with tritium nuclei.
The scientists reconstructed the original experiment at the TUNL particle gas pedal and confirmed Rulig's original conclusions. The thermonuclear reactions identified in the report are indeed possible and are the basis of modern thermonuclear energy, which is being actively developed in the ITER and NIF projects.
Thus, the researchers managed to restore historical justice and bring a new page in the history of thermonuclear research.
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