Quick recap: This is how the most energetic laser in the world works. Up to 192 laser beams are
directed at a target the size of an eraser head inside this target chamber. Inside the target, is
a capsule about the size of a peppercorn and this holds fuel typically a heavy kind of hydrogen that
when shot at by these lasers gets compressed into super high energy and density states. Scientists
here at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) do this to achieve nuclear fusion and to understand
some of this really cool extreme physics that goes on in these interactions. And in our last video,
we talked about how perfecting the target and the capsule can improve these experiments
and that often involves diamond but probably not the kind you're picturing. In this video,
we're going to talk about another kind of NIF target optimization but this one involves spiders.
When you are in these experiments, anything that breaks symmetry and anything that is making some
noise in the measurements, is going to decrease your yields so the general part is to try to
remove all these things that are disturbing the symmetry of the system. Now remember, the capsule
sits inside the target but it can't just be like rolling around in there. It has to be perfectly
centered so we can try to generate as much energy as possible from the reaction. In the past few
years the goal has been to minimize the points of contact between the capsule and the target.
Hopefully this will decrease the disturbance to the reaction and increase the energy yield. So
what about suspending the capsule from ultra thin wires? The problem with metals is that
when you make very thin wires below micrometers, they tend to be very brittle and they break.
And the next thing is okay let's gonna use something that is the strongest material that is
about the same things that we need and we start using spider silk. Yeah, you heard that right.
Spider silk. This is one of the strongest materials in nature.
The only problem with spider silk is that the properties of spiracy depends on the environment.
Especially relative humidity and the room etc. And also depends on the spider that is making
it. So they have this spider farm when they have the spiders and they were like retrieving the
spider seed and collecting it to make this kind of structures what they can support the spheres with,
you know, this spider web and they have a super spider that was making the best
spider web and suddenly, the spider died. And they were "Oh no, we don't have more really
high quality spiders here" so I better say okay this is not going to work because even though,
especially seems to be a very good product, so it has a lot of variables that we cannot control so
let's gonna go to another man made product. To avoid any further spider-related finickiness,
the LLNL team has now moved to creating what's called carbon nanowire. Everyone knows carbon when
you go to barbecue you have charcoal, so you have this black paint you have carbon that's carbon
but also you have diamond that you have seen in this shiny transferrin stone and it's actually
the same element. It's the same carbon atom but the only difference between both of them is just
the way the atoms are arranged. Same element but they have totally different properties.
One structure of carbon discovered in the past few decades is what's called a carbon nanotube.
This is where the carbon atoms have an extremely strong chemical bond that forms them into a tight
cylindrical structure. That's actually stronger than steel by weight but as the name suggests,
they are still only in the nano-scale. They can't grow to the length the NIF team needs
to suspend the capsule in the target. So of course the team grew a forest and spun some yarn. I'll
let Xavier explain. Carbonation is made of a myriad of carbon atoms. And basically you grow
the carbon nanotubes in a race that will look like carpets one sentence would refer to these arrays
of carbonyl tubes like carbon atom forest. And then what we do is that this particular forest you
start pulling from one of the edges and the carbon now to start self-assembling. So you start pulling
one of the carbon atoms there because they have physical interaction and friction between them,
so you start pulling the next one and then it pulls the other, the next one and the
next one and the next one. And it's like a chain reaction going to go like that.
And this chain reaction is essentially weaving individual carbon nanotubes together into one
longer fiber, creating the carbon nano yarn that can support the capsule inside the target,
reducing imperfections in the reaction when the NIF shot goes off. It's basically artisanal.
So it has a lot of challenges on it because you have to do everything by hand under the microscope
because still the process is very manual. So even a naked eye it's difficult to see them when they
are there. We currently can make fibers less than 10 microns in diameter and we're pushing
the technique to go all the way to one micron as a suitable replacement for the spider silk.
It's a very interesting project. It's really fun. It feels really rewarding that you are helping
the scientific advancement you know to try to give the tools to the physicists so they can
improve the geo and hopefully reach to ignition. And that's one of the coolest things about NIF
science. Progress in one area pushes forward innovation in others, like our understanding
of nuclear physics. The diagnostic equipment that measures what happens during a shot,
the computing that helps simulate these nuclear interactions or
processes all the data produced by an experiment or maybe just taking inspiration from nature.
It's pretty clear though that whatever happens next at NIF, it's going to be
pretty wicked cool. If you have questions about this work or something else happening at the Lab,
leave it for us in the comments and don't forget to watch the other part of this video where we
dive into how diamonds are used at the NIF. Make sure you subscribe to this channel to
catch more videos just like this and as always, thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.