First Plasma on the Levitated Dipole Experiment 447
deglr6328 writes "In light of recent, somewhat disappointing news in the world of nuclear fusion research, it is worth noting that there are still reasons to keep up hope that some breakthroughs are yet to be made. At 12:53 pm on the 13th. of this month the Levitated Dipole Experiment achieved its first plasma. The Levitated Dipole Experiment(LDX), built at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center as a joint project of Columbia University and MIT, is a magnetic confinement fusion research device, that unlike all previous stellarator, reverse-field pinch and tokamak like experiments, uses a superconducting levitated torus to confine its plasma. The LDX's achievement of first plasma is, in a way, about 17 years in the making even though it has only been in construction since 1999. The concept for LDX was first considered by Akira Hasegawa as he was studying the data coming in from the Voyager missions which flew through the (dipole) magnetospheres of the outer planets. He noticed that unlike laboratory confined fusion plasmas which tended to be unstable, difficult to control, and which lost energy quickly, the plasma of a magnetosphere is intrinsically more quiescent, stable and actually reacts favorably (increases its density/temperature) to outside perturbations such as ie. bombardment by a solar storm. A highly informative and interesting video of operations on the day of first shot can be found here. Congratulations to the scientists and engineers who have worked very hard on getting the project to this point and here's looking forward to the possibility that LDX will reveal fundamentally new physics in the arduous quest for clean fusion energy."
If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the money (Score:2, Interesting)
If even 1% of that money were spent on cold fusion research, we would probably be having much more interesting results by now. The great physicist Richard Feynman once said that he didn't see any theoretical reason why cold fusion would not work.
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:4, Funny)
*sigh* (Score:2, Insightful)
Pons and Fleischmann style cold fusion does not and never has worked -- the excess heat the observed was an artifact from their calorimetery equipment caused by the fact that neither of them knew how to properly use it....and the pseudoscientists have been running with the idea since.
Show me an independantly verifiable cold fusion experiment that gives a positive result, and _then_ it might be worth funding. Until then, so-called "hot" fusion is the way to go.
Re:*sigh* (Score:3, Informative)
They've actually got it working. They just can't get breakeven yet.
Re:*sigh* (Score:3, Informative)
Re:*sigh* (Score:5, Informative)
Those guys indeed knew how to use their calorimeter, but they did not concern themselves with any other part of science, and, hence, in the interpretation of their measurements (not in the measurement results per se) they have made several trivial mistakes. Sadly, that is the way many scientists who are in possession of some exotic/expensive piece of equipment behave. I've seen it many times.
Now about cold fusion... Unfortunately, it is physically impossible, and for a reason. The Coulomb barrier to bring together 2 hydrogen nuclei is enormous, and it is the reason why 10^6 K (or maybe even hotter) temperature is normally needed to start the reaction. At more human conditions, nuclei could, of course, tunnel through the Coulomb barrier and fuse as much as they want. Problem is, this tunnelling is extremely slow (rate is actually easy to calculate - I think it will be in any college radiochemistry course), and it won't be sufficient to sustain the reaction, or even measure its heat on the macroscopic scale.
The mechanism proposed by Fleischmann did not take into account the extremely high activation energy for fusion. They did have a vague concept that there should be an activation energy, and that it is probably high, but they did not realize how high it is...
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2)
Yes there is. It's called entropy.
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:4, Funny)
Oh yeah? Sure there is! Everyone knows that subatomic particles use the metric system not English measurements, and a displacment of of 3.048 E14 just isn't a round enough number to be likely.
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:3, Interesting)
WOOO I'M THE INVISIBLE MAN (on certain time scales)
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:5, Informative)
We have no reason to believe otherwise.
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2)
We?
To some there is every reason to believe that humans are more than just a complex arrangement of atoms.
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:4, Insightful)
Not all of quantum physics can/has been seen. For example tachyon particles.
>mathematics can describe things which don't/can't exist in this universe.
Yet do we discount what mathematics is saying just because we can't experiment it in some lab?
Emergence (Score:3, Informative)
Check out the phenomena known as emergence. For example, ants find the shortest route to a food source through clever use of their pheromones. Clever in the sense that the system is ingenious, however the ants do not consciously do anything except mark their trails as they randomly run about and follow other pheromone trails. The pheromone path-creation is not programmed into the ants. They just follow a couple of simple rules.
The result is very ingenious: the shortest route will eventually have the strong
Re:Yes, we do! (Score:3, Insightful)
My point exactly.
Well, not exactly.
You are probably thinking "complex" as in "complicated" rather than "complex" as in "not random". The universe is immensely random. Adding randomness to randomness gives more randomness. Leaving structure (complexity) alone also - eventually - results in more randomness. Left to themselves, things fall apart (except Big Macs, which seem to be able to last for months unchanged when left alone). This is called entropy. Anothe
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2)
Same electronic parts arranged into a radio, priceless.
Something can be more then the sum of its parts.
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2)
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:3)
Don't be silly. The phenomenon of life is merely the VERY complex arragngement of atoms, and nothing more.
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2, Informative)
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2)
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:2)
"The term "cold fusion" was coined by Dr Paul Palmer of Brigham Young University in 1986 in an investigation of "geo-fusion", or the possible existence of fusion in a planetary core."
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:4, Interesting)
No we wouldn't. Nobody is going to throw money at trying to do in practice something which doesn't work in theory. There is no theoretical model considered valid in which cold fusion works.
Paper and pencils don't cost much. Show the world a reasonable calculation proving from physics as we know it, that this is possible, and you can bet they'll get money.
The great physicist Richard Feynman once said that he didn't see any theoretical reason why cold fusion would not work.
Do you have a source for that? Besides which, that isn't relevant. There is a huge difference between showing something is possible and showing that it is not impossible.
Feynman himself also made a lot of good statements about pseudoscience. Perhaps you should read them? Unlike you, I provide a reference [brocku.ca].
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:4, Insightful)
[...]There is no theoretical model considered valid in which cold fusion works.
[...]Show the world a reasonable calculation proving from physics as we know it, that this is possible,
You don't get interesting results but working from what we "know" (as witness hot-fusion's rather dismal track record). You get interesting results by closely examining phenomena which aren't explicable by "physics as we know it". That's how we went from Newtonian physics to relativity and quantum theory.
Suppose the variation in Mercury's orbit had been dismissed as observational error or some drag effect of the solar atmosphere? Or that the odd lines and steps observed in hot-body spectra were dismissed as some filtering effect of the atmosphere or the spectrographic apparatus. They didn't fit within a Newtonian universe, after all.
Enough diverse experiments that involve packing deuterium nuclei together in a metal crystal lattice (whether by electrolysis or high pressure) have showed odd results to be worth pursuing further. Semiconductor effects were observed decades before the invention of the transistor, we just didn't have the materials science or the theory to understand it properly.
Re:If the cold-fusion people got even 1% of the mo (Score:4, Interesting)
Well then you're going to have to explain to me why you don't think the laws of physics "as we know it" is a sufficient model for fusion. It certainly has provided us with relatively good models of the Sun, as well as predicted the Hydrogen bomb, and it also has shown to work with tokomak fusion.
Newtonian physics did not correctly predict the orbit of Mercury. There was no real reason to assume it should.
However, Newtonian physics did correctly predict,for instance, the motion of billard balls.
Now say someone walks along and says billard balls don't work at all in the way Newtonian physics says they do. Yet noone is able to make the billard balls act that way. Would that grounds for abandoning Newtonian physics as a model of billard balls? Abandon for what?
There is no alternative theory which allows cold fusion. If there was, people would be testing it.
In the same way that physics "as we know it" 150 years ago provided an accurate model for billiard balls, we have every reason to believe physics "as we know it" today provides an accurate model for fusion.
It is not the final model and it is probably not an accurate model for say, the inside of black holes and for sub-subatomic particles and the large-scale forces in the universe.
If they got 1% of the results... (Score:2)
If cold fusion is feasible, then the scientists that claimed they achieved it did the field a disservice by lying about it. No one has been able to replicate the experiment, and it turned out to be just a bunch of lies to get media attention.
Re:how depressing (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this truly the state of disaffection and ignorance that exists in the general public (and this is slashdot!) today toward fundamental scientific research and technological achievement? I simply can not imagine that this is actually the case and I stronly hope that what is seen here is not merely a product of intellectual laziness but is, instead, a result of a deep failure on the part of the scientific community to excite and educate the public about its pursuits. At least I HOPE this is the case, then perhaps something might be done to remedy the situation.
Though, a small part of me suspects that this is not the case and that in the ever richer and more comfortable "west" we truly are slowly but surely slipping down a slope of scientific indifference and even hostility; and that subsequent generations may curse our graves for allowing a wide margin of the public to consistently indulge in such shameful, wilfull ignorance.
Re:how depressing (Score:5, Insightful)
The lack of serious comments might in part be due to skepticisim. I'm coming from more of a medical perspective, but I'm sure in all fields that getting 'too' excited about promising initial results is a sure way to spend a huge amount of time severly let down. Aside from that, as the AC below mentioned, it's Saturday. I think many reading are doing so as a quick fix, rather than getting ready for serious reading.
And for someone lacking in background on this, such as myself, it looks like a significant amount of reading to get the background needed to really appreciate this. You provided ten different links, some of which themselves require additional reading to first determine which links there need to be read in order to grasp their significance to the topic. The general information link on the Stellarator page didn't even work. Yes, I just proceeded to look up Stellarator on wikipedia. But I'm also blessed with an abundance of free time today. That said, I know it is difficult to properly gauage the amount of background information any group is going to have. Assume too little and it can come off as insulting 'plasma is a really hot thing, and would burn you if you tried to eat it!', too much and the audience might wind up too intimidated and just crack jokes instead of doing a little background reasearch in order to catch up. Also, while slashdot does have a scientific nature, it's 'very' heavily skewed to computer science. The further away from that, the more the main audience is going to be out of the area they have the most confidence speaking about. Many people won't speak up if they find themselves in a topic where their lack of knowledge is very apparent.
That said, I hope you don't become too disheartened. While I came to this with very little understanding of the topic, I found a preliminary read of some of the information quite interesting and intend to look further into it. And if I am, I'm sure many others who are as ignorent of physics as myself will be doing so as well. We'll probaly just not comment, as there's little someone in our situation could really add to the discusion.
I in part agree with your view of the moderation. I loaded the comments up hoping for additional clarification by people knowledgable on the subject, and instead most of the moderation was for funnies. I wouldn't be too disdainful of the cold fusion moderation though. Personally, I'm grateful it was moderated up just because it also brought the conflicting replies to my attention as well.
Re:how depressing (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't feel too bad. Most Slashdotters are out on the town on a Saturday night; it's just the losers who are still posting. As for the moderators - no-one understands how it ends up being what it is, but the leading theory is that most moderators are under the influence of some pretty serious drugs while moderating.
Seriously though, congratulations on first plasma. I visited LDX about 8 months ago and you've c
Apples and Oranges (Score:3, Insightful)
sure, don't forget that (Score:2)
Any QP will tell yoy that we know very little about QM.
What to do now? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What to do now? (Score:2, Funny)
Major setback (Score:5, Funny)
Doc Ock unavailable for comment... (Score:2, Funny)
And Doc Ock was unavailable for comment...
Impulse engines (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Impulse engines (Score:3, Funny)
Crack.
Re:Impulse engines (Score:2)
It becomes plasma in the round thingy in the middle with help of the mighty dilithium crystals
There's no fusion, no plasma and they're cylinders and not tori therefore, nope they weren't, at least not onto a levitated dipole experiment =)
wait...who was working on that? (Score:5, Funny)
No matter.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Greenpeace et al will still behave like this is the beast of apocalypse.
Just as they do with nuclear power. Such a horror. Clean energy replacing coal/oil plants spewing hundreds of metric tons of fossil fuel waste into the atmosphere each and every year? Surely it must be evil.
Re:No matter.. (Score:5, Informative)
Call me crazy, but I think this is a good solution.
Re:No matter.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No matter.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No matter.. (Score:2)
Although modern fission reactors are pretty good and stable, it's just absurd to split atoms when you could be smashing them into eachother.
WAY COOLER
Re:No matter.. (Score:2)
But if a new technology (let's say, nanotechnology) went haywire and infected a whole town with some crazy nano-plague that turned them into mush, how quick would we be to use that technology in the future?
Re:No matter.. (Score:2, Insightful)
However if you read that article you will see that accident they mention has nothing with anything nuclear.
Steam accidents can happen at most plants... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only types that don't use steam that I can think of off the top of my head is wind and hydroelectric. Most solar plants use mirrors to direct the light to a central point, using the collected light to make steam...
A better link would be Don't Mix Uranium in a Bucket [bbc.co.uk]
This was not a power plant accident, but a processing accident where the workers were, in my opinion, darwin award candidates. "Let's bypass safety procedures and rather than using the machine provided and doing it in small batches (to keep the uranium from going critical), we'll hurry it up by dumping it in a bucket and stirring it!"
It should be noted that more people die each year in coal mining/transportation accidents. But since these deaths happen so regularly, they're not reported in the news. It's like the fact that flying is safer than driving, but people pay lots of attention to plane crashes, because they're unusual.
I should be noted that the BBC makes some scary statements, like more than 300,000 people in the surrounding area were placed in danger. Other articles point out "Hundreds evacuated", which makes me think that the BBC is exagerating in their statement. Like most industrial accidents, the dilution needed to reach that many people would render it mostly harmless. The workers were harmed because they were right there.
Anytime industry gets big enough, accidents will happen occasionally. Especially with the universe conspiring to come up with bigger fools...
Re:No matter.. (Score:3, Insightful)
[This post is in support of the parent, and really a response to the grand-parent]
Chernobyl wasn't an example of the danger of nuclear power, IMO, it was an example of the danger of *communism*. It gets really tedious having to point out to all these tree-huggers over and over again, that *nothing* like Chernobyl was ever built outside Soviet Russia, never would have been, and now that the USSR is gone, it *never* will again. Chernobyl, even when it was
Re:No matter.. (Score:2)
Re:No matter.. (Score:2)
Re:No matter.. (Score:2)
The difference between nuclear meltdown and the tradgedies you describe is a difference of years: years until the surrounding areas become habitable.
The immediate areas surrounding Chernobyl will not be habitable for thousands of years. The surrounding areas will not be habitable for hundreds of years.
If a b
Re:No matter.. (Score:3, Informative)
Without a plentiful source of water, there wouldn't be a good way to cool a power plant in the desert. That's why so many of them are built on prime real estate on lake shores or rivers.
Re:No matter.. (Score:2)
has sources in stable countries
While I agree fossil fuels are also not a good choice, I don't see what you're trying to say here. Guess why Norway has among the highest GDP in the world? Hmm,
Re:No matter.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Using Chernobyl as an example of why nuclear energy is stupid and I wish you people would cut it out. (By "you people" I mean the people who keep doing it.) Chernobyl was an antiquated design by the time it was built and they were testing what would happen if they did several stupid things at once. Compounded with the stupidity of operating such a crappy old reactor design, this causes a catastrophic accident which, as you point out, made many people unhappy.
Should you do several stupid things at once in a modern reactor, the reactor will fail in such a way that it shuts down. It doesn't melt down. The reactors are designed such that they must constantly be maintained just to keep the reaction going, and if they fail, they fail to a cold state.
This is not to say that it's impossible to have a horrible catastrophic failure with a newer design, but consider this: Coal burning power plants have put more radioactive material into our atmosphere than all the nuclear fission accidents combined.
Fusion would be the clean and safe way to go if it were here, but it isn't. It's going to be a while before we have a reactor that has any output beyond sustaining itself and it's going to be even longer than that before we have a fusion reactor which is actually profitable on a reasonable time scale. As such, I think it's worth it to build a few fission plants now. We can always decommission them when we finally get fusion working meaningfully.
Re:No matter.. (Score:2)
Re:No matter.. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they typically do the opposite: they have the cadmium "control" rods get lowered DOWN into the reactor. Cadmium absorbs neutrons, so if something goes wrong, they just drop them and the reaction stops in a fraction of a second.
Not that this makes everything safe. Read the report on Three Mile Island sometime. It's long, but it's a fascinating read.
Re:No matter.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No matter.. (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't a "hole" it was a crater and pitting from boric acid leakage that damaged the reactor vessel. According to some other articles I saw in a quick Google search, they have a emergency sump system that would recirculate any coolant that leaked thru that hole back into the reactor - there would have been no meltdown *
The boric acid was stopped by a stainless steel outer layer that was another of the layers of defense. It could have eaten thru that, too, but it would have taken many years, many more than elapse between the regular inspections (AMAF it was when the plant was taken down for refueling - which happens pretty seldom - that they discovered the damage) and this was a *very* unusual accident, one which has prompted a considerable amount of redesign. Note that David-Besse and similar plants are also very old designs.
*NO* power production system is safe. NOT EVER. But fission plants have a much better safety record than any of the others do, which was drinkypoo's point. Look at the coalmine disasters, natural gas production facility disasters, and other dangers we face from "conventional" energy production. Even including Chernobyl fission has killed or injured FAR fewer people and environments than any of the other technologies.
Anyway, try to make an effort to get your facts straight and read about the events you describe before fear-mongering. If nothing else it helps other people take you seriously.
BTW, I lived near and got power from a fission reactor for twelve years out of my life. Never bothered me nor any of the people who lived there, either. Of course we Minnesotans know that our winters are much more likely to kill us than a power generation plant is
* Although there is a question of whether the filters in the emergency coolant containment system could have clogged, this problem is being addressed and has already been fixed in many plants - this according to info that's already fairly old and fixes have been implemented.
Cheers,
SB
The Causes of the Chernobyl Accident (Score:5, Informative)
IANANP, BIWARPFMEAC*. I'd like to elaborate a little bit on this point:
Fission occurs when a heavy radioactive nucleus (in the control rods) absorbs a neutron and splits into two smaller nuclei and a few extra neutrons. These new neutrons can be absorbed by other heavy nucli, and more fission occurs.
Now most of the neutrons released move too fast to be absorbed by a nucleus; instead, they just bounce off. In order for a sustainable reaction to take place, a material - called the moderator - is required to slow down the neutrons so that they can be absorbed.
Most modern** nuclear reactors are pressure-water reactors. This means that they use water as both a coolant and as a moderator. If the water excapes, then the reaction fissles out.
However, Chernobyl was initially designed with a solid moderator built into the reactor vessel. (I think it was graphite, if I remember correctly.) It used water purely as a coolant. So when the coolant leaked, the reactor kept on fissing atoms and the reaction got out of control (although not fast enough for a thermonuclear reaction).
That wasn't the only problem. The reactor's personal paniced and tried to send the control rods in too quickly. While the control rods were halfway in, neutrons bounced into the bottom of the reactor and formed a critical amount for a chain reaction. At the same time, the heat of the reaction and loss of pressure from the origional malfunction turned the leftover water into steam pockets also in the bottom of the reactor. Soon after, an explosion ruptured the reaction vessel.
Perhaps the primary cause of the accident (and of TMI) was the confusing interface to the equipment! Some devices used red lights to signify emergency conditions, while others used green or another color. Instruments were hard to read and slow to respond. An ergonomical failure contributed to the accident.
Today, most control rooms have learned from the mistakes at TMI and Chernobyl. They are easier and more consistant to use. However, even more improvements are possible with new designs. It is a pity that nobody will allow the old workhorses ot be retired.
* I am not a nuclear physicist, but I wrote a research paper for my Engineering Analysis class.
** "Modern Nuclear Reactor" is somewhat of an oxymoron. Due to NIMBY feelings among the general public, most commercial nuclear reactors are old (60s-70s era) and modern designs are never given a chance despite the improvements in efficiency, safety, and (less) waste production. :-(
Re:The Causes of the Chernobyl Accident (Score:3, Informative)
As far as I understand, they were performing a deliberate experinment on a live reactor. That means, they have a 500MW reactor (or whatever it was) going at something like 80% power connected to the grid.
The nature of the experiment was such as they had to disconnect the safety equipment because they would have prevented screwing with the core parameters in unorthodox ways.
Basically, the assholes got what was coming to them. Apparently they made the core "oscillate" which is very bad
The authoritive reference for the Chernobyl Acc. (Score:3, Informative)
FYI, the most complete reference for my research paper was the Ph.D. Thesis for Dr. Alexander Roman Sich when at MIT:
Re:No matter.. (Score:4, Informative)
Also, fusion isn't totally radiation free. Disposing of the liners for the current fusion reactors is expensive because they got charged with neutrons that escaped the reaction. This radiation is part of the problems that ITER tries to solve with different choices in liner materials and other shield materials.
Re:No matter.. (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the fusion designs I've read about (I"m a computer guy, but physics interests me) use magnetic containment in addition to physical shielding. They're also a lot smaller than the sun. The pysical shielding does get
Re:Except.... (Score:2)
Re:Except.... (Score:2)
NASA has been using them for years on deep space probes. If we could adapt them for use on earth we could have a convenient use for some of the waste products of nuclear fission.
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
The bile spewed by supposedly intelligent people when it comes to atomic energy is simply staggering. Greenies don't object to nuclear power on principle - the problem is safe transport and storage of fuel and waste. Take away that problem (as future fusion reactors could do, correct?) and I'm all for it.
Enjoy your karma, whore.
further bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
that said, there are granite statues littering washington, dc which emit more radiation than the yucca mountain storage facility's (where the US puts all their nuclear waste) radiation levels or that it is even allowed to come close to. in addition to thi
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
For decades the threat considered most viable in the transportation of nuclear waste has been the green movement, not handling accidents, not terrorists, not even traffic accidents. Understand that greenpeace is a hinderance to clean energy and perhaps you might start helping to resolve the problem. Coal plants put out more radiation every day than three mile island ever did. We have coal power plants because it isn't feasible to build nuclear power plants (no plant has been built in the US since three mile island).
The hard reality is greenpeace is opposed to nuclear energy because it puts a positive spin on the word "nuclear" and greenpeace is vehemently anti-military. They would rather seen tons of radiation pumped out worldwide from coal power plants than to allow the word nuclear to lose it's negative connotation. It's a power trip on the part of greenpeace, nothing more, nothing less.
Fools
Eco-Bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, that's just something they say to sound more rational. Now if you compare risks and accidents with conventional fossile fuel transportation such as oil tankers and gas pipes.. Suddenly carting around rather modest amounts of nuclear fuel/waste isn't such a big problem.
Don't forget that the amount of uranium required to produce equivalent energy as coal is less than 1/1000.
As for storage.
Re:Just Because It Isn't ... (Score:2)
Your logic is el'Crapo.
Re:No matter.. (Score:3, Insightful)
And this is different from poisonous elements like lead and arsenic how? Oh yeah, it goes away over time.
If we were willing to take a practical approach, we wouldn't have this problem. Dump it in a subduction zone, use it in breeder reactors for more power. There are solutions. I'd rather live around a properly run fission plant than a coal plant.
disappointing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:disappointing (Score:2, Funny)
It's more efficient than incandescent and the bulbs last longer, but it's not exciting every time I turn on a light.
Oh, but it is getting excited
Making Plasma? Someone check their server... (Score:4, Funny)
Too Much Text In Summary!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Makes perfect sense (Score:2)
Reminds me of the Retro-Encabulator... [ebaumsworld.com]
The original machine had a base plate of prefabulated amulite, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the two spurving bearings were in direct line with the pentametric fan. The latter consisted simply of six hydrocoptic marzelvanes, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar waneshaft that side fumbline was effectively prevented. The main winding was of the normal lotus-0-delta type placed in panendermi
In other news ... (Score:3, Funny)
Mirror of the video. (Score:2, Informative)
So we don't turn the server into plasma, here's a mirror of the video:
http://razor.csbnet.se/First_LDX_Plasma2.mov [csbnet.se]
Pretty pictures (Score:2, Funny)
Still not doing Fusion the right way... (Score:3, Interesting)
The only clear way to do this is via Focus Fusion, which means one is working with the natural instabilities of Plasma rather than attempting to straightjacket them with massive Magnetic Fields. Nothing more really needs to be said about Focus Fusion from me so I'll just paste what they're saying here [focusfusion.org]:
Focus fusion is the only known method that can achieve hydrogen-boron fusion. It also has other advantages over tokamak based deuterium-tritium fusion reactors. Focus fusion reactors will be much less expensive for the same amount of power. Tokamak reactors generate electricity by boiling water for a steam powered generator (high energy neutrons provide the heat.) This is the same method that coal power plants use. The only difference is the heat source. In a coal power plant the steam generator is the most expensive part of the plant so replacing the heat source will not result in a lot of savings. Also, this method of generating electricity is limited by the fundamental efficiency limits of heat engines. Focus fusion reactors do not require a heat engine. They generate electricity directly. After all, electricity is just moving charged particles. The particle decelerators in a focus fusion reactor merely transfer the electricity of charged particle beams into a wire. This process does not face the efficiency limits of heat engines.
A focus fusion reactor should be able to economically generate power in quantities as small as 20MW from a power plant the size of a two car garage. This means they will be useful for powering individual villages in the third world where regional electricity grids are not as well developed. And in developed nations focus fusion power can be generated near where it will be used to reduce transmission losses and can be owned by the communities it serves to reduce dependence on speculative energy markets.
If there are any financiers out there who have the backbone to do what is right in this world and do what is right for mankind, I urge you to fund this research to banish forever the specter of Fossil Fuel shortages and associated ecological damage and begin a new era in Human History.
Re:Still not doing Fusion the right way... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the equivalent of using Rockets underwater verses using fins.
Bad analogy; squid, octopus and cuttlefish have no problem whatsoever utilizing a propulsion system that acts on the same principles as a rocket.
Regarding the main thrust of your post, please could you outline the salient points of the conspiracy which currently stands in the way of the cheap, eco-friendly, limitless power which you describe? Extra points if you use the phrase 'zero-point energy'!
Re:Still not doing Fusion the right way... (Score:2)
While I agree with the thrust (har har) of your post, the principles of squid, octopus, etc. propulsion is much closer to jet than rocket propulsion. Rocket propulsion acts on the principle of conservation of momentum, aka action-reaction; water jets push against the water (by squeezing some internal muscle, I believe), just as manmade jets push against the air.
Re:Still not doing Fusion the right way... (Score:2)
And it gets even more maddening every single year I see this tired nonsense with the wrong way to achieve Fusion trotted out like it's something new. It really doesn't matter what process these so called highly intelligent people at MIT etc..use, the process is still the same, you're working against the Plasma rather than with. It's the equivalent of using Rockets underwater verses using fins. It's almost as if they want to fail in some perverse way. So much intelligence being squandered on these absurd Fu
Summery for the Bandwidth Challenged (Score:5, Funny)
Brought to you by The Undergraduate Research Assistants Pool - a statistically significant proportion of particle physicists agree, only Undergraduate Research Assistants can stand up to the kind of abuse a particle physicist demands.
[TITLE SEQUENCE]
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[8 minutes of reality-show-finally like filler including:
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with research assistant]
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with research assistant]
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with female research assistant]
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with research assistant in blue hard hat]
[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with Physicist]
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[uncomfortable in-your-face interview with research assistant in blue hard hat]
]
[nasa tv style clip of scientists congratulating each other over inscrutable data on distant CRT's during and after triumphant success]
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We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming
My grad school room mate worked on this (Score:2, Interesting)
Makes one wonder if his thesis will be invoked at some point in this new endeavor.
Meanwhile I was working on chronological developments in Biblical Hebrews and their applicability
Trisops, another stable plasma configuration (Score:5, Informative)
After producing two rings at the opposite end of a vacuum tube, they were guided by a magnetic field until they collided. At collision they repelled each other, and then were compressed. The rings heated up and stayed stable for 30 microseconds under compression ( which by plasma standards is a long time). The funding was cut off in 1978 because the concept was too far from the mainstream.
In 1999 John Brandenburg received a grant from NASA to move the experiment from Miami to Lanham MD (near NASA Goddard). He moved it and reassembled it, but never received an money to operate it. It stands gathering dust.
Right now, Paul Koloc is doing something similar in his garage, producing ball lightning ( a stable plasma structure that has been documented since Roman times). His project, Plasmak, has received some sbir [zyn.com] funding. For more details on the Plasmak, look here [google.com].
From reading the white paper, I do not think the Trisops plasma is the same configuration as in the levitated dipole experiment. I do not have a clear idea of the structure of the Plasmak.
I list the Trisops papers below for anyone who wants to follow up.
Daniel R. Wells, Paul Edward Ziajka, and Jack L. Tunstall. Hydrodynamic confinement of thermonuclear plasmas TRISOPS VIII (plasma liner confinement). Fusion Tech., 9:83, 1986.
Winston H. Bostick and Daniel R. Wells. Azimuthal magnetic field in the conical theta pinch. Phys. Fluids, 6(9):1325, 1963.
"Simultaneous Electron Density and Ion Temperature Measurements of a Moderately Dense Plasma Using Doppler and Stark Broadened He-II Lines" (with others), Applied Optics (Letters) v 17, p1481, 1978.
"High Temperature, High Density Plasma Production by Vortex Ring Compression" (with others), Physical Review Letters, v 41 #3, p166, 1978. "
The Interaction between Two Force Free Plasma Vortices in the TRISOPS III Machine" (with others), Physics of Fluids, v 22, p379, 1979.
Re:Trisops, another stable plasma configuration (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Trisops, another stable plasma configuration (Score:3, Informative)
We did not have the funds for a Thompson scattering laser, so we measured the density of 10^16 to 10^17 by differential Stark broadening between differenent ion levels of Ne.
We
tritium is evenly distributed (Score:3, Insightful)
who hate us. That's a benefit right there.
Re:Why do we not use the existing fusion reactor? (Score:4, Funny)
I must admire your long term view though. I had never considered the possibility of running out of hydrogen in the solar system.
Re:Why do we not use the existing fusion reactor? (Score:2)
Re:Why do we not use the existing fusion reactor? (Score:4, Informative)
In the case of LDX, however, tritium is completely unnecessary for operation, as it makes use of the Deuterium-Deuterium reaction.
And there's a lot of Deuterium in the oceans. I believe the estimate is that we could run our entire civilization off of the Deuterium present in just the first centimeter of the oceans for one or more years. And we'd put most of that water back, so you don't even have to worry about the oceans being taken away from all the little fishies. :-)
Re:Why do we not use the existing fusion reactor? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why do we not use the existing fusion reactor? (Score:2)
You could have several of them.
First plasma? (Score:2)
Abundant clean energy as a bad thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
His problem was not with the energy source itself, but with what he thought it would be put to use doing. His preference was to limit what mankind could do with it by going for only relatively limited sources of power.
I strongly disagree with him, as you could make the same point about advanced medicine leading to biowar ag
Re:energy (Score:3, Interesting)
E.g. Global warming not caused by so-called greenhouse gases, but by waste heat generated by inefficient energy (esp. electricity) utilization..
Every day or two, the earth receives as much thermal energy from the sun as humans have harnessed in all of history. Any conceivable waste heat generated by humans would be an insignificant drop in the bucket.
Where we do have a measurable affect on the earth's temperature is changing the reflectivity of the ground so that the earth absorbs more of