Artificial Sun

Cutaway schematic of ITER. Note the size of the human for scale. Published with permission of ITER.

I strongly support international collaboration, so I was excited to read on Bainite’s blog that ITER has been formally announced. ITER is a project to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power on a large scale; it is a joint project between the European Union, Japan, the People’s Republic of China, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States.  The planned location is in Cadarache in southern France (approximate location 43°41′55.65″N 5°44′30.61″E). ITER will fuse deuterium and tritium, contained by magnetic fields. The resultant high-energy neutrons will produce heat. In a fusion power plant, this heat would then be used to produce electricity; however, as ITER intended for research and demonstration, the heat will be allowed to escape.

Fusion is a form of nuclear energy. In fact, it’s the way our sun and all the stars produce energy, which means that ultimately, it’s the source for almost all energy on Earth. The energy from the sun powers solar panels, heats air to produce wind currents, and evaporates water which flows back down to produce hydroelectric power. Plants capture sunlight to make their food in a process called photosynthesis; animals (including humans) eat those plants or eat animals who ate those plants to obtain food. Similarly, our fossil fuels—such as coal, oil, and natural gas—are formed from the remains of plants and animals that died millions of years ago.

The form of nuclear energy used in today’s power plants is fission, in which a large atomic nucleus is split into smaller pieces, releasing energy. While this results in millions of times at much energy as conventional chemical methods like burning coal and avoids producing greenhouse gases, it still produces radioactive waste products. On the other hand, fusion combines two small atomic nuclei: this releases even more energy than fission, and does not produce any toxic waste products. However, the trick is that it is technically much more difficult to control and harness the energy. Of course, we already possess the ability for uncontrolled fusion—the hydrogen bomb—which releases its energy all at once.

Family Circle

Source: David M. Hillis, Derrick Zwickl, and Robin Gutell, University of Texas

In my previous post I mentioned “Pale Blue Dot,” a photograph taken by Voyager 1 from the outer reaches of the solar system showing Earth as a barely visible dot of light. But even on Earth, we humans are just one in a family of millions.

Brett Keller discusses in his blog Brett Keller & the World a remarkable “tree of life” published a few years ago in the prestigious journal Science. This “tree,” arranged in a circular format, was developed by David Hillis and colleagues at the University of Texas. They selected around three thousand species, trying to include representatives from all major groups. You may read more about it and see where our species, Homo sapiens, fits in at Mr. Keller’s blog.

Possible phylogenetic tree

These representations, more formally called phylogenetic trees, are intended to illustrate the evolutionary relationships between species. Lines are drawn from two species (call them A and B) that are closely related, meeting at a vertex called a “node” representing the most recent species that is ancestral to the both of them. Another node may occur further up, representing the most recent common ancestor of the A-B ancestor and species C, and lines will be drawn to both of those. And perhaps even further up is the ancestor to species A, B, C, and D, with one line going to the A-B-C ancestor and one going to species D.