Slashdot Mirror

This may help you understand;

https://www.triumf.info/wiki/p...

"Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke
"The Power of Progression" by Isaac Asimov
"Time For The Stars" by Robert A. Heinlein, with particular attention to the "Long Range Foundation"

As usual, people spouting nonsense continue to ignore relevant facts. "Peak oil" is about increasing production more than it is about production itself. It is the point at which, despite all the known and even un-known reserves, total production cannot increased. It can only stay roughly the same for a while, after which it declines. And nothing you have written indicates that our oil-production capabilities are actually growing to match world population growth (annual death rate from all causes is roughly 50 million per year, annual global birth rate is about 130 million per year, making the annual growth rate about 80 million per year).

As for fresh water, I know a significant about about desalting, and even about methods that are quite energy-efficient in accomplishing it. The energy for that still needs to come from somewhere, while all those extra people, every year, make their own demands on available energy supplies, for other purposes. Are we increasing our total power production to match population growth? NO.

Regarding synthetic fertilizer, I refer you to ammonium nitrate. Here is a relevant article. Basically, phosphates are not the only nutrients that plants need. So, the more people we need to feed, the more nutrients we need to feed plants, in order to grow food to feed people. The energy consumption associated with making ammonium nitrate can only go up, so long as population increases AND we don't want them to starve.

I see you also made the same Truly Stupid Statement made by so many others who dis the facts regarding world resources. "We have enough supplies that I know of to feed us for at least 200 years assuming our population doubles 3 times." WHAT THEN??? It is like you actively want a Malthusian Catastrophe to be as bad as possible, when it inevitably happens! To see just how stupid that attitude is, read this. Unlimited Growth Is Mathematically Incompatible With Finite Resources, Even When You Include The Entire Universe.

Growing food indoors is yet another way to consume energy (for the grow-lights). You didn't say where you expected it to come from. So now let me mention a phrase you probably don't see very often, "global thermal balance". The average temperature of Earth mostly depends on how much solar energy it receives in the daytime, and how much it radiates to space, mostly at night. If the arriving energy increases, then temperature goes up a bit, and the world tends to radiate a bit faster (maintaining that higher temperature). Likewise, if the arriving energy decreases, then temperature falls a bit, and that is also maintained. This happens every year (about a 1% change) as the world's elliptical orbit changes the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

Well, humans are doing things to add extra energy into the global heat balance, besides what they are doing with CO2, interfering with the normal rate at which heat can escape to space at night. Some of what we produce is irrelevant, because it is directly related to the normal energy cycle (solar, wind, and hydro power). But much of it is a relevant factor. Burning fossil fuel releases energy that was stored away millions of years ago; it is now an addition to the global thermal balance. Nuclear power, whether fission or fusion, also directly contributes to the global thermal balance. One of the more popular ideas for energy production is about collecting solar power in space, and beaming it to Earth --every erg of that would also be a direct addition to the global thermal balance.

The point is, even if we solved the CO2 problem, so long as population increases and we find ways to generate more energy, we will be working to upset the global thermal balance. Right now our total effort is trivial, compared to what the Sun supplies to Earth. In the long run, though, it cannot be blithely ignored.

That is actually also what the article states - 100.000 times smaller then nano-technology...

Theres already several facilities in the world that create "designer"-nuclei at different energies, the major ones at low energy are ISOLDE@CERN and Triumph in Vancover while eg RIKEN in Tokyo produces excotic nuclei at higher energies...

But this is of course good coverage for MSU :)

<dundee>That's not a cyclotron. That's a cyclotron.</dundee>

That's not a cyclotron. That's a cyclotron.</dundee>

First of all, humans "discovered" fusion in 1953 with the first fusion bomb, or "hydrogen" bomb. What this speaks of is controlled fusion.

Secondly, this isn't fusion on even a battery scale; this is a few thousand atoms per second or so. So unfortunately, it's not a matter of scaling up to produce a reactor. The amount of energy being put into the system dwarfs by thousands of times the energy from fusion being put out.

Third, this isn't even the discovery of table-top laboratory scale fusion. As an undergraduate, I worked on a muon catalyzed fusion experiment at TRIUMF in Vancouver. By the time I was working on the experiment in 1994, the fusion reaction in the experiment was so well understood that it was being used to analyze other properties of solidified Hydrogen.

And I'm afraid it's a little bit of a dodge to say it's "at room temperature". The article doesn't say this, but presumably this takes place in a vaccum, where temperature is basically undefined in any conventional sense.

So a very nifty result, but not a discovery, I'm afraid. It will very likely be useful to study the fusion process, or perhaps other things as well.