The US has finished constructing a huge physics experiment aimed at recreating conditions at the heart of our Sun. The US National Ignition Facility is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion, a process that could offer abundant clean energy.
The lab will kick-start the reaction by focusing 192 giant laser beams on a tiny pellet of hydrogen fuel. To work, it must show that more energy can be extracted from the process than is required to initiate it.
Professor Mike Dunne, who leads a European venture that is also pursuing nuclear fusion with lasers, told BBC News that if NIF was successful, it would be a "seismic event".
"It would mark the transition for laser fusion from 'physics' to 'engineering reality'," he said.
Two possibilities here: First, we are on the brink of entering a Star Trek scenario overnight. Or a Quiet Earth one.
All bets are off this year.
.
7 comments:
You know that picture of the "E.T. and heavenly beam" you posted here? When I was looking at it, I also saw it as a laser beam contacting with earth and the "e.t." is the plume of smoke, before I had read this article.
this laser fusion will never work since it is not gravity that rules the universe, but electricity (plasma). Like "dead dinosaurs" as the source of oil, gravity as the source of all stars is very weak science
watch "Thunderbolts of The Gods"
(science catching up with Esoteric History?)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4773590301316220374
Following anons post above, I would also say this is a very inefficient way of extracting energy from hydrogen. Browns Gas, or HHO, has proven very simple, beyond cheap & requires not one laser to make :D It sort of falls under "suppressed fuels" Stanley Myer being the most infamous proponent, dying mysteriously just as his water spark plug was about to rev up production.
The goal of the people who fund these big bang , heart of the sun lazer crafting, seems to be to mystify & simultaneous mechanize the simple rational concepts of harnessing energy. To my eyes this always what lies at the weakness of the modern scientific paradigm, bringing us wasteful dangerous technology such as nukes & pharmaceuticals up the wazoo.
The article says that fusion occurs in Suns because fuel (hydrogen) is pressurized by massive gravitational force, which (following basic laws of thermodynamics) raises the temperature of the gas until it's a plasma.
Plasma (ionized gas, 4th state of matter) is an electrical conductor but it is not 'electricity'.
Because we can't recreate the pressure conditions within a sun on our tiny little planet, we instead use lasers to heat a hydrogen pellet until it's in a plasma state.
At a certain level of excitation, the hydrogen fuel atoms fuse together to form helium, and leftover mass is released as heat and light energy. This is the concept of mass-energy equivalence that Einstein derived in 1905.
I'm not sure why Anony 6:15 thinks that gravity isn't important. Maybe their feet don't touch the ground.
Who knows what they're really up to? I'm sure this is only part of the story...
I watched the video that Anony 6:15 linked to. Thanks for sharing that. Sorry for the flippant joke about your feet.
"Thunderbolts of The Gods" discusses an electric model of the cosmos based on data gathered by the Deep Impact comet probe. Cosmologists, Electrical Engineers and Mythologists weigh in to say how an electric Sun, Solar System, Galaxy and Universe fits into ancient observations (mythology) and present-day earthly models.
They explain how the nuclear fusion model of the Sun seems to be debunked by phenomenon that seems to fit naturally into an electric model. The most cogent argument was that the center of the sun is not the hottest part of the sun, which you'd expect in a giant ball of nuclear fusion.
At about the 35:50 timepoint they explain the electric model of the Sun for about 10 minutes. It starts off:
"...if the Sun is connected to the rest of the Galaxy in an electrical sense, then that doesn't require it to burn itself at all - and the energy that we receive is actually being received from the Galaxy. The Sun is acting as focus for energy received from the Galaxy."
It's interesting. Later on they say that nuclear fusion hasn't been proven, yet. The parts the nuclear fusion process have, but not the whole um, shebang.
This laser experiment could reveal a lot more than it was designed for. I hope that the reaction can be contained (it's supposed to be contained by a magnetic force) and that we don't experience a 'Quiet Earth' because of it.
I often wonder who decides if and when a new technology will take a hold and how so. (eg. I remember seeing a clip of Jack Nicholson promoting a water fuel car - sometime in the 60's or 70's. He drank water from the exhaust pipe.)
What then happened to that?
The word is that oil cartels kill these projects. I'm always very skeptical about public reports of 'new', 'clean', or otherwise 'free' energy sources. There is so much invested in the existing energy grid that there is very little incentive for something better... Not until all the fossil fuel is gone at least.
Post a Comment