Big Ideas Lab

NIF Diagnostics

Episode Summary

Lawrence Livermore turns an event too fast, too hot, and too dense to touch into knowledge.

Episode Notes

Inside the National Ignition Facility, scientists create bursts of fusion hotter than the center of the sun that vanish in 100 trillionths of a second. The only way to trust what happened is to measure it - and Lawrence Livermore has spent decades building the instruments that can see the unseeable, the same instruments that proved the world's first fusion ignition was real.

This is the story of NIF's diagnostics: how Lawrence Livermore learned to photograph a dying star, prove a nuclear stockpile still works without ever testing it, and turn an event too fast, too hot, and too dense to touch into knowledge.

Guests featured (in order of appearance):

• Dave Schlossberg - Experimental Physicist, National Ignition Facility, LLNL
• Cara Vennari - Experimental Physicist, LLNL

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Big Ideas Lab is a Mission.org original series.

Executive Produced by Levi Hanusch.

Sound Design, Music Edit and Mix by Matthew Powell.

Script by Caroline Kidd

Story Editing by Levi Hanusch.

Audio Engineering and Editing by Matthew Powell.

Narrated by Matthew Powell.

Brought to you in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.