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12/10/2022 5:19 am  #1


Technology? How about fusion?

"Researchers at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that a new magnetic field setup more than tripled the energy output of the fusion reaction hotspot in experiments, "approaching" the level required for self-sustaining ignition in plasmas.
The field was particularly effective at trapping heat within the hotspot, boosting the energy yield."


This is one of those things I hear/read about and wonder if it's just a baby step in our collective knowledge or the key to great strides of progress. Or key to the key, Or a stride to to key to the key. Or a stride to the bathroom after that Mexican lunch.
Most of these Popular Science type blurbs I never hear about again, but the knowledge may be used by researchers every day.


 Freedom is just another word for nothin' left to lose.
 
 

12/10/2022 9:51 am  #2


Re: Technology? How about fusion?

Energy required to sustain that reactor is so massive that it is nowhere near (yet) possible.  Furthermore, the type of fuel necessary for fusion is extremely rare.  Don't expect it to be practical even in your grandchild's lifetime.

 

12/24/2022 2:30 pm  #3


Re: Technology? How about fusion?

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

I ... wonder if it's just a baby step in our collective knowledge or the key to great strides of progress.

It is a baby step into understanding and implementing something much larger - quantum physics.  From the Economist:

Svenska Dagbladet, one of Sweden's leading dailies, wrote, "We are one step closer to unlimited energy."  La Repubblica, one of Italy's, pronounced that, "The dream of a clean, renewable, and safe source [of energy] is approaching."

Well, we aren't.  And it isn't, Or, if it is, that has little to do with recent events in Livermore, California ... a useful step towards electricity generation by fusion it is not.

Only a scientific accomplishment.   Something that began in the 1990s.  To reduce the amount of energy necessary to create fusion means a better containment method is necessary.  Only discovered is that fusion can exist in a contained environment.   A baby step from which so many more are necessary. Tomahawk type systems are more promising.  And remain unworkable.

And then is an other problem with fuel sources.

The step puts numbers to what is necessary to have contained, controlled fusion.  Unfortunately many do not understand what was accomplished.  For the same reason so many, for so many decades, had no grasp of what Einstein accomplished.  Advance science is not always understood by the many who do not first learn the details.

A far greater accomplishment was the Higgs Boson and a resulting Standard Model.  Part of a major scientific accomplishment to confirm tools for moving in the right direction.  And a notable step into better understanding mass and gravity.  Concepts that still are so little understood.  And yet so fundamental to future advanced science.  Not as big as Einstein's accomplishments.  But a significant step necessary for the purpose of human life - advancement.  Learning more of God's laws.
 

 

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