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Record concentrations of a helium isotope found inside 62-million-year-old Arctic rocks could be the most compelling evidence to date of a slow leak in our planet's core. Building on the results of a previous analysis of ancient lava flows, a team of geochemists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the California Institute of Technology are now more certain than ever that helium trapped in the core as our planet was forming is making its way to the surface. Helium isn't the kind of element that makes friends easily. Being so light and non-reactive, there's little to stop the gas from...

Helion Energy, a startup developing engines powered by nuclear fusion, is certain to pique the interest of sci-fi fans. But the more important question for Helion President Philip Wallace is whether the same can be said of venture capitalists. That’s because the Seattle-based company is on the hunt for $20 million in financing to build a full-scale model of its fusion engine. That engine, which the company currently has a prototype of at one-third scale, works by forming hot, ionized hydrogen gas. The gas is then electromagnetically accelerated to greater than 1 million mph and collided in a burn chamber...

NASA’S NEW SHORTCUT TO FUSION POWER Lattice confinement fusion eliminates massive magnets and powerful lasers PHYSICISTS FIRST SUSPECTED more than a century ago that the fusing of hydrogen into helium powers the sun. It took researchers many years to unravel the secrets by which lighter elements are smashed together into heavier ones inside stars, releasing energy in the process. And scientists and engineers have continued to study the sun’s fusion process in hopes of one day using nuclear fusion to generate heat or electricity. But the prospect of meeting our energy needs this way remains elusive. The extraction of energy...

Fusion power is the technology that is 30 years away, and always will be, according to skeptics, at least. Despite its difficult transition into a reliable power source, the nuclear reactions that power the sun have a wide variety of uses in other fields. The concept fusion drive, called a direct fusion drive (or DFD), is in development at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). Though still under development, the engine itself exploits many of the advantages of aneutronic fusion, most notably an extremely high power-to-weight ratio. The fuel for a DFD drive can vary slightly in mass and contains...

Synopsis: Due to outdated international law (1967 Outer Space Treaty) Trump administration to work with other like minded nations to settle on a new agreement called the "Artemis Accord" going forward to place bases and industry on the moon and other celestial bodies. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine pokes Obama in the eye.

The rover landing is one step in an envisioned series for ISRO that includes putting a space station in orbit and, potentially, an Indian crew on the moon. The government has yet to set a timeframe. The rover landing is one step in an envisioned series for ISRO that includes putting a space station in orbit and, potentially, an Indian crew on the moon. The government has yet to set a timeframe. “We are ready and waiting,’’ said Sivan, an aeronautics engineer The mission would solidify India’s place among the fleet of explorers racing to the moon, Mars and beyond...

This week the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation known as the SPACE Act of 2015 (The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act), which recognizes and promotes the rights of U.S. companies to engage in the exploration and extraction of space resources from asteroids and other celestial bodies. That’s a huge win for private space exploration companies, especially for companies with upcoming plans to tap into the economic potential of the moon. That’s because the legislation, in its definition of “space resources,” is sufficiently broad to include resources found on the lunar surface. In short, the moon could now be...

China plans to send an unmanned lunar lander similar to previous probes but with a much heavier payload to the far side of the moon. Due to communications issues with the Moon itself blocking transmissions, China will undoubtedly launch a relay satellite in geo-synchronous lunar orbit to transmit data back, scientists say. The Chinese mission is set to determine how much of the rare element Helium -3, which exists in very small quantities on Earth, can be extracted from the purported rich deposits located on the moon's far side. H-3 is a light non-radioactive gas that has the potential to...

UC Santa Barbara geologist Jim Boles has found evidence of helium leakage from the Earth’s mantle along a 30-mile stretch of the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin. Using samples of casing gas from two dozen oil wells ranging from LA’s Westside to Newport Beach in Orange County, Boles discovered that more than one-third of the sites — some of the deepest ones — show evidence of high levels of helium-3 (3He).Considered primordial, 3He is a vestige of the Big Bang. Its only terrestrial source is the mantle. Leakage of 3He suggests that the Newport-Inglewood fault is deeper...

A huge fault in the Earth's crust near Los Angeles is leaking helium, researchers have found. They say the unexpected find sheds new light on the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin. It reveals the fault is far deeper than previously thought, and a quake would be far more devastating. It follows a report from the U.S. Geological Survey has warned the risk of 'the big one' hitting California has increased dramatically.

The moon is made of far more valuable stuff than green cheese. And one man wants to capitalize on that fact. NASA, which ended America's space shuttle program in June, says it wants to privatize spaceflight. Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, Inc., wants to go a step further: He wants to privatize the moon itself. Jain's company plans to piggyback on private shuttle flights, using them to carry his lunar landers and mining platforms to the moon. "People ask, why do we want to go back to the moon? Isn't it just barren soil?" Jain told FoxNews.com....

As a child growing up in rural India in the 1960s and 1970s, Naveen Jain would gaze up at the moon and imagine a life beyond his modest surroundings. Today he's still gazing at the moon, but for far different reasons. Jain, 55, is co-founder of Moon Express, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company that's aiming to send the first commercial robotic spacecraft to the moon next year. This serial entrepreneur-he founded Internet companies Infospace and Intelius-believes that the moon holds precious metals and rare minerals that can be brought back to help address Earth's energy, health and resource challenges. Among...

Newt Gingrich told Floridians this week that that under his administration the US would have the first permanent base on the moon. An American moon base could provide America with enough Helium-3 to provide for all of country’s energy needs Nations and private companies are racing to be the first to scout the moon for Helium 3, a rare gas which could make almost unlimited, clean fusion energy a reality. Some experts estimate there a millions of tons in lunar soil — and that a single Space-Shuttle load would power the entire United States for a year. Both China and...

Imagine a safe, clean nuclear reactor that used a fuel that was hugely abundant, produced only minute quantities of radioactive waste and was almost impossible to adapt to make weapons. It sounds too good to be true, but this isn’t science fiction. This is what lies in store if we harness the power of a silvery metal found in river sands, soil and granite rock the world over: thorium. One ton of thorium can produce as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3.5 million tons of coal, and the thorium deposits that have already been identified would meet...

WASHINGTON — The United States is running out of a rare gas that is crucial for detecting smuggled nuclear weapons materials because one arm of the Energy Department was selling the gas six times as fast as another arm could accumulate it, and the two sides failed to communicate for years, according to a new Congressional audit. The gas, helium-3, is a byproduct of the nuclear weapons program, but as the number of nuclear weapons has declined, so has the supply of the gas. Yet, as the supply was shrinking, the government was investing more than $200 million to develop...

A few weeks before the tsunami struck Fukushima’s uranium reactors and shattered public faith in nuclear power, China revealed that it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on thorium. This passed unnoticed –except by a small of band of thorium enthusiasts – but it may mark the passage of strategic leadership in energy policy from an inert and status-quo West to a rising technological power willing to break the mould. If China’s dash for thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape and may avert a...

India's development of thorium for nuclear power generation caught world interest in the light of the blasts at Japan's nuclear power stations. CNBC-TV18’s Sanjay Suri and Anup Gomen report. India is considered as the world leader in thorium. The Kakrapar-1 reactor located near Surat in Gujarat is the world's first reactor which uses thorium than depleted uranium for vital power generation. Compated to uranium, thorium has less fissile. The nuclear physicists are now looking at thorium as the safer model. Ian Hore-Lacy from World Nuclear Association said, "India is the only country in the world that develops thorium fuel cycle....

The 2009 indie film Moon features Sam Rockwell as an employee (named Sam) of the fictional Lunar Industries, a mining corporation back on Earth. Just wrapping a three-year solitary stint on the moon, Sam is charged with overseeing the automated harvesters which extract helium-3 from the lunar regolith. Canisters of the harvested helium-3 are then sent to Earth to be used to generate fusion energy.

It may look like any average building but behind closed doors could lie the answer to safe renewable energy of the future. Here at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore California, scientists are aiming to build the world's first sustainable fusion reactor by 'creating a miniature star on Earth'. Following a series of key experiments over the last few weeks, the £2.2 billion project has inched a little closer to its goal of igniting a workable fusion reaction by 2012.

Talk of a large-scale U.S. nuclear renaissance in the post-Three Mile Island era has long been stalled by the high cost of new nuclear power plants, the challenges of safeguarding weapons-grade nuclear material, and the radioactive lifespan of much nuclear waste, which can extend far beyond 10,000 years. But a growing contingent of scientists believe an alternative nuclear reactor fuel—the radioactive metal called thorium—could help address these problems, paving the way for cheaper, safer nuclear power generation. Three to four times more plentiful than uranium, today's most common nuclear fuel, thorium packs a serious energetic punch: A single ton of...