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Build a Nuclear Fusion Reactor at Home
FridayBob writes "For those of you tired of waiting around for someone else to achieve the holy grail of physics, now's your chance to beat 'em all to it. All you need is some basic engineering skills, this site and the inspiration necessary to make your very own 'fusor' produce more energy than it consumes. Hopefully, you'll have more luck than its inventor, Philo T. Farnsworth, who first built it in the 1950's after inventing the television some 30 years earlier. If you run into problems you'll be able to count on a enthusiastic support group, as the contraption seems to have developed a cult following over the past few years. Okay, so I'm skeptical that this approach will ever really work, but at the very least it sounds like a really cool science project!"
There was a kid who tried building a reactor once for his Boy Scout merit badge, and he got arrested for it. Do you want to risk that?
Pass.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
This story is an example of someone who actually tried to do something simmilar.
Its a fantasticly strange and scary story.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Finally I can get a Mr. Fusion to power my Flux Capacitor.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
April 1st already?
" Lisa in this house we obey the law of thermodynamics!"
Whether or not this ever works, TV will go down as Farnsworth's most detrimental contribution to humanity.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Wha, I was under the impression that John Logie-Baird invented television... what gives?
Ahh, I get it now, Philo T. Farnsworth is an American, right?
But the most compelling promise of fusion is in the fuel itself: fusion is produced from an isotope of hydrogen called deuterium, which exists in the Earth's oceans in sufficient abundance to supply the planet's energy needs for hundreds of millions of years - until long after the Sun itself has flamed out.
The sun is supposed to burn out in 5 billion years, I believe.
For the love of god, man, let it go
In my country trying to do this would be seen as an act of terrorism and they would put me in jail if not assimilate me.
I live in Iraq, I wan't one please.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Before everyone gets started on their arguments about who invented television (thanks submitter!), please read through the comments on this article. Unless you have newly unearthed evidence, please leave it alone as it has been discussed to death. Ok? Thanks.
A power source for my flux capacitor!
This is, as you see, rather old stuff. These devices do actually work, but they have an eta 1. ;) with this "fusor device".
They start with building their first high voltage (HV) supply, go on with tesla coils (bigger and bigger), eventually build a laser and end, more or less irradiated
Just search for "high voltage", "tesla coil", "homebuilt laser" etc. on google.com and you'll find "similar" stuff...
Finally! Now I can uninstall Microsoft Fusor.
Now Every slashdot nerd's gonna have one. Next year it wont even be cool anymore to have your own. And then someone is going to come out with a dumbed down version for all the jocks to make. Honestly, is nothing sacred?
The Blade Itself
I guess that's what Pons & Fleischmann should have been looking into...
"eta 1" has to be "eta much less than 1". Sorry.
Good news, everyone!
It seems making a nuclear reactor these days makes you an automatic member of the axis of evil. So now I can claim slashdot promotes terrorism!!!
"I wan't one please".
because then he would have wound up with a
NUCLEAR POWERED TELEVISION SET!!
now that's a plasma screen worth looking at...
Terrorists like Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi?
Nuclear reactors work on a principle called fision, not fusion.
Whit fusion of deuterium you get a whole lot less of the bad kinds of radiation.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Not really surprising from the guy who invented the Smelloscope..
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Antimatter reactions are. Far more energy can be produced with a matter - anti-matter collision than with fusion.
I'd trust an inventor named Farnsworth just as much as I'd trust a physician named Zoidberg.
I once shot a man in Reno 'cause they cancelled Firefly.
I PITY da foo who try to make fu....sor!
Hehe... wonder if Hubert J Farnsworth is a relative of his :)
;)
The article would have been better if they started with 'Good news everyone...'
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
You should really qualify your statement "Whit fusion of deuterium you get a whole lot less of the bad kinds of radiation".
Are you talking about direct radiation from the reactor in gammas or neutrons (alphas and betas are shielded)? They will be significantly more.
Are you talking about spent fuel? It will be very low.
Are you talking about the reactor complex? It will be higher.
So as you can see, just because it is fusion doesn't mean that it gets rid of the popular tongue vulgar word 'radiation'. But it does minimize (but not stop) contamination.
What a load of crap. Good luck. These reactors require more energy to run than they produce. And D2 (deuterium gas) isn't cheap either. As for the oceans having enough deuterium to let us outlast the sun... cods whallop. There's obviously a mis count there, or the numbers are fudged. Maybe if you produced such a small amout of energy that one could make it last longer that's possible, but the Sun contains more matter than the rest of the solar system combined. The Earth's oceans arent' even a drop in the bucket (pardon the experssion).
The energy gain, or lack there-of, is why there are no commercial fusion reactors, energy output doesn't off-set cost and energy input. -- It's not like fusion hasn't been achieved! It has. You may even want to check out the muon catalyzed fusion reactions that were being done right up until a year or so ago at TRIUMF in BC Canada, same problems there too... and that was the most promising in a long time.
Now we don't have to develop a static powered car, but can rather make a Mr Fusion to power the Flux Capacitor so we can go to the future where all of life's problems are already solved!
Link: Naturally, knowledge regarding the safety aspects of such an effort is essential! Among the more common concerns are the work
with the explosive hydrogen gas, deuterium. High voltage hazards abound as over 20,000 volts is needed to
accelerate the deuterons. Radiation in the form of X-rays and neutrons must be dealt with as well.
Where is the kids-don't-try-this-at-home-disclaimer?
If at first you don't succeed, then sky diving definitely isn't for you.
who put this in the Science section? This belongs in Comedy. Or, if such a category exists, Retarded.
Hello, my name is Philo and welcome to Secrets of the Universe. Today we are going to learn how to make plutonium from common household items.
Free messageboards and more! Your girlfriend's seen myWang
A little agressive?
Actually it took be a few minutes to find the article.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
"Temporarily Unavailable The Tripod page you are trying to reach has exceeded its hourly bandwidth limit. The site will be available again in 2 hours! Thank you! "
I want one NOW!
Oh, hey, I've been meaning to ask you. How's that trolling think working out? Bringing in the big bucks?
Whether or not this ever works, TV will go down
Holy shit, man. I just spent $3000 on a new TV, and mine doesn't do that! What brand is yours?? Fuck! Maybe I can still take mine back to the Good Guys...
If the stable one-atmosphere plasmoid didn't do it, and the DIY breeder reactor didn't succeed, there will no doubt be some ingenious /. readers who decide to create a high-energy neutron source out in their garage to remove themselves from the gene pool. CmdrTaco, Timothy, what is it with all the sterility how-to guides you're giving your readers?
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
Imagine all the little kiddies with their noses practically against the screen, getting dosed with ionizing radiation all the while. Or sitting in front of it, knees up, gonads up close and unshielded. One wonders if there would be identifiable effects from this... no time to check.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Amen.
Some of these nuts are actually pretty close to sustaining a reaction using this method.. One post had a guy running a sustained reaction for 10-15 seconds, pouring out alot of neutrons (3.29E+06 neutrons/sec). Unfortunately the energy budget is still too high (50 Kv @ 20mA (1KW)).
And all he had to say is that he had a good weekend.. *shakes his head in amazement*
If they keep this up, they might ecplise CERN's work as well as overhaul the X-Ray fusion reactor thats under development.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
We'd get it by making it, and the energy we use to make it would have to come from more conventional sources.
They're allways out of flux capacitors when I call, they say they'll be getting some in about two weeks, but they never come.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The current state of fusion energy is pretty bad (way below a self-sustaining reaction) but this could still be used as a neutron source to drive a sub-critical fusion-fission reactor. Anyone who opposes fission power because of the spent-fuel issue wouldn't find this to be an improvement. (I would, because high-energy neutrons would be useful for transmuting fission products themselves, extracting their remnant energy and transforming them into stable isotopes. But I'm a geek and a technophile.)
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
But don't tell anyone I own a book of matches, okay?
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
People still get to try to be funny here, don't they?
I believe this would be a FISSION not FUSION reactor would it not?
A slight difference considering no fusion based power reactors exist in the world as nothing is able to currently contain the energy/heat from the process.
Did you ever see the Simpsons where Homer and Grandpa went back to the old family farm, and homers shadow was burned into the wall from their Radiation King tv set. I also remember in 6th grade all the monitors in the computer lab had stickers on them, "Now With Low Radiation!", or something like that.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Trekie... Believe it or not, but Star Trek wouldn't be considered your first rate Scientific Encyclopedia/
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
filter...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Really? They seem in now ;-)
Get some real information on fusion:
European Community, Fusion Programme
U.S. Fusion Energy Sciences Program
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or (ITER) site
a special Canadian ITER site
This page has a lot of links to different fusion sites around the world. These websites probably contain a lot more useful information than the slashdotted article.
By the way, my university happends to have a research center on plasma physics. It's not as easy as "some basic engineering skills, this site and the inspiration necessary to make your very own 'fusor' produce more energy than it consumes" =)
I read through some of the basic info on the page (before some of it got Slashdotted) and then started reading the forums. That's when I started finding the unfortunate schwag like this thread . The problem with all of these sorts of projects is that they tend to attract nutters who think they've rewritten the laws of physics in their garage from scratch using "maths" that they just can't divulge yet because they don't quite work. Ugh. Free energy weirdos and neuvo-quantum threory weirdos - two of a kind.
Things like this always make me wonder, if an area is so promising, why aren't there any academics out there getting funding to pursue it? I mean, I realize sometimes the academic ESTABLISHMENT can be closeminded, but if something has merit, there are usually a FEW academics who will go out on a limb and pursue it to the point that they demonstrate sufficiently interesting results to build a broader base of interest. I've never honestly heard of massive numbers of academics whole-hog ignoring truly promising areas out of some misguided conspiracy bullshit, and frankly it's quite hard to imagine, since the drive for personal fame and glory usually trumps the desire to avoid stepping on toes and to "toe the line".
It sounds like there is real work yet to be done to get these things close to breakeven, and it probably ain't gonna get done in some garage project, but hey, you never know.
its not like /. readers breed anyway.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
OK, I'm ready to go. What no links?
Clinton was in office longer. Give Bush time.
I think you meant cretin, unless you were talking about someone from the island of Crete. Come to think of it they are basically Greek, thus humorless.
Sorry dickfuck, fusion doesn't work like that. Thanks for playing though. Our lovely consolation prize is a swift kick in the fucking jimmy!
*WHAM*
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
TV was originally thought of as an educational and communication tool. It's a piece of technology that can go both ways in how people use it--good or bad. People tend to be idiots (see bad driving), veg out, and lazy as long as they have food, so the detrimental effects of TV probably better coincides with a nation's wealth. I would also point out that the increasing conglomeration of corporations controlling multiple networks (although, imnsho, oddly enough, AOL/Time/Warner puts out the better channels) has decreased the potential utility of TV, as it caters to the masses--the masses are more like cows and sheep or other animal husbandry animals than we like to believe.
Personally, I like TV. I like getting news and seeing the video of events. I like being able to get great weather reports in the background that are up-to-date. Yes, I can get this through radio or other means. I like seeing shows like Horsepower TV or Trucks, and seeing something that I normally don't have the time or money to hobby around with. I like watching the History channel, HGTV, or TCL to see what new products are.
Put another way--TV was a little similar to the web/www. In it's early days, the "web" was great. It's still great. But there's a lot of porn, mischevious activity, boring blogging, etc. All in all, probably becoming more detrimental. But undoubtedly, there was places on the web that are great sources of information or at least a starting point to things that people can't even get from their local library or reading national news.
Personally, I'm glad for both. And I'd be rather happy if fusion came to some practical fruition.
If it produces neutrons, some of those neutrons will escape, get captured, and produce radioactive waste. It may or may not be as bad as fission, but it's still a problem.
When Mean Geeks and Mr. Stag start vacuum pumping, I don't want to be around.
energy.
The second law is about entropy. Do you know what entropy *is*? Entropy is the law that requires heat engines to consume fuel despite conservation of energy -- and the single most misunderstood law of physics. Parent poster was right.
KFG
"This perpetual motion machine Lisa built is broken. It just keeps going faster and faster."
KFG
So I read through the patent and I've seen talks on electrostatic confinement fusion at plasma physics conferences (plasma physics is once again my day job).
...
... legalese is not good science writing) why high energy ions would be trapped and fuse in such a modest potential well.
I'm quite doubtful. My objection can be explained by looking at Figure 2 of the Hirsch and Meeks patent linked to through the fusor.net site.
You need accelerate the ions to high energy (or equivalently heat the ions to high temperatures) so that they will collide and fuse. If the energy is too low, electrostatic repulsion will prevent the nuclei from getting close enough to let the strong force do its work.
So what is my objection with Figure 2?
To confine a plasma with sufficient energy to have respectable amounts of fusion requires very high potentials (think many mega-volt DC potentials) to trap the ions if you are doing it electrostatically. If the potential barrier isn't high enough, the ions will escape the reactor without fusing---you dump all this energy into the ions and they just leave, taking your energy with them
For an electrostatic confinement system, you would need confining potentials comparable to the height of the nuclear electrostatic repulsion barrier (for the ions to fuse, they need to have energies higher than the nuclear electrostatic repulsion barrier but below the reactor electrostatic confinement barrier).
Figure 2 is the potential distribution for the reactor. The potentials are a couple _thousand_ times too small to have any chance of confining fusion capable ions. At no point in the patent was it explained (clearly
Kevin
P.S. Furthermore, a purely electrostatic confining potential is not allowed by Poisson's equation (the equation governing electrostatics), as is taught in any first year college physics class. The quick explanation is that Gauss's law implies the existance of a charge in the potential well. But if you are trying to make a trap to isolate a particle, that is exactly what you don't want in your well. For example, Penning traps use a combination of electrostatic confinement (confinement at the end-caps) and magnetic fields (radial confinement). However, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt as this appears to be relying on dynamic effects virtual cathode/anode effects. (Actually, much of the initial modeling of virtual cathodes was done by my thesis advisor in the 1960s.)
Well, it's probably easier than building this at home: The National Ignition Facility
He has funding for other uses of his device.
a trampoline?
You take your shoes *off* to jump on a trampoline.
You also tend to shout "Voila!" while jumping on a viola.
KFG
The site recommends an article from tom ligon on Analog magazine, which talks about "the simplest fusion reactor". /.ed but over free bandwidth.
Since all you slashdot readers are kinda lazy here is the google cache for the article:
link
Its pretty nice, since the tripod page linked on the site is not
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
well clinton did Surpass reagon, believe it or not.
Gone Fission
Then you'd be in trouble.
There are really lots of people who helped create TV as we know it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Philo T. Farnsworth didn't invent TV. I did. Philo T. Farnsworth is the devil.
Game... blouses.
If it was an american who invented the TV which used the mechanical endoder/decoder and the scottish man who invented the electronic system, would we all be using TV's based on the rotational disc?
Remember, you have to add the palladium to the hydronium, not the hydronium to the palladium. Oh, wait, that doesn't work? Um, add the hydronium to the palladium.
:)
Sorry Dr. Fleischmann, it doesn't work
Don't mod it if you don't get it.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
You can easily build an IEF device that generates neutrons. But then you can easily turn a van deGraaf generator into an accelerator that will produce neutrons.
What neither of these will do is produce more fusion energy out than goes into accelerating the ions. In the case of IEF, you lose energy when ions scatter without fusing and collide with the accelerating grid, or when they undergo charge exchange reactions with neutral gas molecules and the energetic neutrals fly off and hit the walls. The cross section for Coulomb scattering is far larger than the cross section for fusion, so a nonthermal ion distribution (such as here) tends to quickly degrade.
And the guy's name, "Philip Farnsworth". That's the professor on Futurama. For crying out loud, I figured a bunch of geeks like you would have seen through all that.
Well ... mistaking the natural background neutron flux for fusion has been a recurring theme in exotic fusion research. (A recent example is the controversy over claims by Oak Ridge scientists that miniscule amounts of fusion were being produced by sonoluminescene.)
...
I have no doubt that you can make a glowing ball of plasma with this technique. It wouldn't rock my world if there was an infinitesimal amount of fusion going on. But, I don't see any reason to believe this will be the next generation power source or could be developed into one.
This isn't an out of hand dismissal of the exotic techniques; I'm much more open to wacky ideas than many of my colleagues. And I don't have a whole lot of faith in mainstream techniques for fusion becoming viable power sources either (but that is another issue).
However, the mainstream techniques have calculated the requirements needed to make a viable fusion reactor. It is neatly summarized by the Lawson criteria. By looking at Lawson criteria, you can develop different strategies for designing a fusion reactor. The strategies amount to trade offs between plasma density, plasma temperature or duration of confinement. Laser and heavy-ion inertial confinement aim for high-density but short confinement time. Magnetic confinement uses a long confinement time but a low density. And so forth
I don't see anything here to indicate this is competitive with mainstreams techniques (which are themselves already lacking) and there are obvious problems with the physics in making the reactor more practical.
But I could be wrong.
Kevin
geez, at least put some effort into it.
Scary to think that a kid did this. Just think what you could cook up with say, 300 million dollars and a couple experts?!!
The Farnsworth Image Dissector sensed the whole image at once, turning it into a collimated beam of electrons. But then it deflected the collimated beam over a scanning aperture, only using a tiny portion of the beam at a time. This approach is very insensitive. The incoming light energy is divided by the number of pixels. Image dissectors thus only work with brighly lit scenes. Very brightly lit scenes. Even with a big lens, you needed bright sunlight. Early versions were hopeless, but by adding some photomultiplier stages, Farnsworth managed to increase the sensitivity a bit. But it was still lousy. Image dissectors are still used today for looking into furnaces, but not for much else.
Zworklin's Iconoscope, on the other hand, accumulated light over a whole frame time, and scanned it off a photosensitive plate with a scanning electron beam. Iconoscopes didn't have a photomultiplier stage, and they, too, produced a weak signal.
After much litigation, licensing, and years of work, RCA Labs finally produced the image orthicon, a complex and expensive tube that combined the photosensitive plate of the iconoscope with the photomultiplier stages of the image dissector. This, at last, produced a usable TV camera tube.
Oh, God... Please don't tell me it was a Canadian.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
to run a heat pump after the heat death of the universe.
KFG
"...scanning lines on a CRT to produce the image."
"The only practical way to have TV. "
Bullshit.
Try harder
according to the Article
But the most compelling promise of fusion is in the fuel itself: fusion is produced from an isotope of hydrogen called deuterium, which exists in the Earth's oceans in sufficient abundance to supply the planet's energy needs for hundreds of millions of years - until long after the Sun itself has flamed out.
just to let you know
I do think that we will get fusion to work before we get cold fusion to be feasible
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking - H.L. Mencken
I'm not sure you understand the meaning of "ad hominmen". The question was a legitmate one. The link you provided supported my argument that IEC is not a power supply as claimed by the slashdot summary.
In your original post, you quote a fusion rate, that while still miniscule, is a thousand times higher than what is actually claimed by your own link:
"Clearly, the fact that these systems produce neutrons in substantial quantities seems unassailable - whether the exact results or numbers Hirsch and Meeks reported or claims (billions of neutrons per second or whatever)"
So, do you read your own links?
Kevin
I live less than 5 miles from TMI
Lucky Me lol
After 9/11 everyone around here was very scared, because just like everyone know about Chernobyl in Russia, foreigners probably know about TMI.
This would not be an issue with a Fusion reactor, because what are they gonna do?
Release Heluim into the air and make us all talk funny? Gee im scared
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking - H.L. Mencken
Sorry, but you're all mistaken.
Al Gore invented television, but back then it was called Arpatube.
If you don't believe me, see Dave Letterman's list of top ten--err.. eleven--things Al Gore invented (and I quote):
Top Ten/Eleven Other Achievements Claimed By Al Gore:
11. Invented television
10. Was first human to grow an opposable thumb
9. Only man in world to sleep with someone named "Tipper"
8. Current Vice President - Moesha fan club
7. He invented the dog
6. While riding bicycle one day, accidentally invented the orgasm
5. Pulled U.S. out of early 90's recession by personally buying 6,000 T-shirts
4. Starred in CBS situation comedy with Juan Valdez, "Juan for Al, Al for Juan"
3. Was inspiration for Ozzy Osboune song "Crazy Train"
2. Came up with popular catchphrase "Don't go there, girlfriend"
1. Gave mankind fire
Wow, it's amazing how far off the deep end some of you people have gone. The linked article and slashdot comments are so far from making any physics or logical sense it's ridiculous. I say this cause I am nuclear physicist with a minor in nuclear engineering. Creating a fusion reactor isn't something you can create as a hobby in your garage. Even if nuclear fusion had be perfected and cataloged to the deepest detail, you wouldn't be able to do it. Especially if you weren't a expert. I think a lot of you are fooling yourselves thinking that such things are reasonable. In terms of CS, it would be like my mother (who happens to be smart but knows nothing of technology) attempting to write 3d graphic video drivers as her first programming project to learn C. In fact, it would be infinitely more complex.
I spent about an hour reading through the whole fusor.net site, including many of the forum posts, prior to posting anything, though clearly you did not or you would realize that the operators of that site made no such claim that you are arguing against. The results of the U Wisconsin group are ~1E8 neutrons/sec and the portable commercial device I linked to here are ~1E7. Please don't be a fucknut and imply that somebody with half a brain can't properly compare orders of magnitude. So again, cut the fucking ad hominem attacks ("Do you read your own links?"). That is an offensive comment to make as it implies that I have somehow made some whopping error in logic or observation, which I have certainly not done. The only error of logic and observation being made here is by you, who seems to want to attribute to me your own misreading of a fucking moronic Slashdor editor/submitter, which I had fuck-all to do with.
inventor, Philo T. Farnsworth
Any relation to Hubert Farnsworth, inventor of the Smell-o-Scope, the Fing-Longer, and the Death Clock?
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
Strangely enough, I can't find any evidence that a Farnsworth-Hirsch-Bussard reactor has ever been built or tested.
For all but one successful (meaningful) fusion reactor you do need uranium. Of course all (but one) of are fusion reactors are hydrogen bombs, which are basically an atom bomb with (heavy) water inside.
;-) ) (btw, you have about 2 hours from the start of the exposure before ... well let's just say you want the experiment to be finished by then)
;-)
In any case, if you want to create a fusion reactor, here's how.
->get 2x7,5 kg of U-238 (weapons grade, obviously) (somewhat toxic, but don't swallow it and you'll live to see the end of the experiment) (not the end of your natural life though
->fill a water balloon with distilled water
->make a hole in the uranium (in the middle) and put in the water balloon
->smash the two pieces together as hard as you can (doesn't need to be all that hard actually, but it might require two tries)
this will create a thermonuclear explosion which will blow around the water balloon, heating a tiny bit of water over the threshold of the "strong force" (sorry I don't know the correct translation) and compress it. It will convert a few micrograms of water into energy. This will blow up something between 10 and 100 square kilometers around you.
As an added bonus you can rest assured, noone in the entire state will dispute that you have indeed built a fusion reactor
images can be found here.
basicly what is created is the center of a star or planet. The physical spheres are used to focus energies which create the necessary field structures to contain one another and they then force further contraction until their own "gravity" causes them to fuse.
I do belive the latest theory of why the earth gives off heat is due to a sustained fusion reaction in the center of the planet. Could this be just the proof of such a posibility?
comment directly in my journal
If you look at the the general tenor of comments about the story and the submitter of the story, they are talking about a fusion power supply---not a low flux isotropic radiographic neutron source. My original comment was directed at them and I stand by it.
Your original reply to the my post was hostile, implied I didn't know my butt from a hole in the ground (that remains to be seen), that I was implicitly accusing researchers of scientific fraud. So, don't be too surprised when you get a curt response.
Kevin
Dr. Mitchell Swartz, who publishes the Cold Fusion Times, is able to procure and distribute heavy water for about $15/liter plus shipping and handling, I believe.
Perhaps you are familiar with the Altamont Pass wind generators, which are quite noisy. Modern wind turbines are quiet (but not so quiet that birds can't hear them) and are generally not resisted by NIMBY-types, even in comparison to ordinary electrical wires. They coexist well with ordinary farmland, and probide the farmers with an extra source of income; in many cases exceeding that of their income from the crops and/or livestock on the same land. Free money makes the backyard wind turbine much more attractive.
This is a myth. Birds have been naturally selected for hundreds of millions of years for their ability to avoid objects while flying. The many wind turbines already in California pose no significant risk to condors or any other endangered species. They do kill a few raptors now an then, but not even 1% of enough to impact their population.
^M^O^D^ ^P^A^R^E^N^T^ ^U^P^
You fucking crackhead fruity nigger mods don't know brilliance when you see it.
White Power!
I wouldn't mind being hot for a change! As for isotope, i'll have to look that up.
Just became that much easier, now all i have to do is build myself a fusion reactor. ;)
This could also be used as a pick up line,"Hey baby, wanna come back to my house to see my nuclear fusion reactor"
=If life was easy, i would be out of a job=
Funny you should mention that. As a former student at the LSU Nuclear Science Center, I can tell you that cold fusion was investigated without results. People there spent time, energy and money to try to reproduce cold fusion but never saw any neutrons. It just goes to show that people will look into things.
I'm not sure they ever did anything with this kind of "fuser." They had a linear accelerator which they used for fusion and other experiments. I don't know what kind of flux they got out of it nor do I know if anyone there worked on any other kind of fusion. They have an impressive collection of thesis and disertations hanging around the building.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Shoudn't it be
In Soviet Russia, all your first post are belong to a beowulf cluster. Profit!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
The only problem with matter - anti-matter reactions is that the entire earth only produces about .0025 grams per year (correct me if I'm wrong in the exact figure, i know it is insanely small though). This is not only nowhere near enough to power anything for an extended amount of time, but it would also be extremely ineffecient to extract this precious material from the earth.
Until a more abundant source of anti-matter is found, this will not be the Holy Grail either. Sorry.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
People make their own lasers, robots, cloud chambers, musical instruments, cars, aeroplanes, telescopes, electronic equipment, software programs and many other techy items. We know this because this information is shared inevitably due to common interest.
... well, the problem is in the confinement, as always.
Call me when somebody does something original with that.
Zzzzz ....
Now, seeing that people make things as complicated as lasers and telescopes and the information of those is quite public, I find it just impossible to believe that a "simple" fusor unit is nowhere operating even though 40 years of (some) development has occurred. Corporate suppression just doesn't work to that degree.
Once again, I think we are faced with an unworkable energy program that hides its lack of technical strength with accusations of conspiracy. Once again, all we have to do to nip this bullshit in the bud is to demand a working and TESTABLE unit.
If the unit can survive the likes of James Randi, then I'll start to believe it.
As for fusion
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Kids getting arrested for science fair projects that frighten the principal are too common.
This kid had to hire a lawyer to get his suspension redacted from his permanent record.
He said he was going to build a Plastic Hydrogen Bomb from plans on the Internet, and that his parents were buying him the parts. The principal had his house searched by the police.
The plans were included in the police report.
Free book: Science Toys You Can Make
You might want to see what he has to say about the history of the fusion program and how to reform it
Seastead this.
"is a joke!", not "is broken".
LOL, don't lose your head over it, he's taken your point and has now learned that fusion is occurring using these techniques in a commercial device from a reputable supplier.
The rest of his submissions are just remedial, ie. there to make him appear less silly.
Here's a link [eads.net] to Arianspace's commercial product (a lab tool, not a positive power fusion reactor) which generates a useful neutron flux based on these IEC techniques.
Given this, presumably there can be no more discussion as to whether IEC produces fusion (although alternative mechanisms are always a possibility). Scaling up is the real question now.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
they come up with a thing to power my laptop. Propelling rockets, my ass. We need this for laptops, remote controls and cordless mice. I dont give a damn about fusion unless they can put it in a AAA cell.
The two most prominent links to IEC-based fusion technology seem to be Arianespace's FusionStar FS-NG1 Neutron Generator and the Advanced Fuels Project at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
:-)
These pretty much place fusion by IEC techniques on solid ground. Now we "just" need to focus on issues of scaling up to positive-power systems.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
D'oh!
Are the two persons mentioned in the grandpa post swindlers or is below quote part of some government coverup? They didn't even have the balls to demo their incredible product.
I'm serious, I don't work for a Fortune-500. Does that mean Sunday, weekends, or weekdays only? I also hold a MA Nuclear Bio-Mechanical-Chemical-Physicist degree and I will not show you my credentials. Onto the chace...
The only two seemingly intelligent posters in this messageboard of slashdot appear to be FnkMaster and Doctor K. What both of these
The SUN of our solar system is currently in fission. If it were a humanoid-ethicaly-described fission then it would be producing energy while sustaining its mass. However, the SUN of our solar system is somehow imperfectly in fission and by way of saying, it is releasing energy and it grows and shrinks and all kinds of unknown events are occuring. If the SUN was a perfect fission, then it wouldn't "burn-out" in the predicted 5 billion years someone here on slashdot (forgive me) stated. Perfect fission would not "burn-out" in any time, it would be perpetual. What humans want to attain is fission that sustains its own reaction and then release energy to be converted to somthing useful. The SUN is not doing this. The SUN will "burn-out." Should this prove that the super-entity (God?) is not able or chose not to produce a fission to sustain itself? I don't know the intention of the super-entity in creation of our SUN. Is it possible to achieve what the super-entity chose to not implement? Yes, and this shows that there is a reason the SUN will "burn-out" and it is short of someone's land-lord saying "pack your bags and get your ass off my property" or a human's parents saying "get out and go travel the world."
That is some verry spooky shit, if you ask me. And more reason for us all to start delving into our books to implement our idea of a "ethical" fission just so we would be prepared to sustain ourselves in absence of another source of energy. Better yet, why bother trying when our own lifetime is exceptionally short. Chicken or Egg is the survey of today? Ok, that is somewhat similar to the uber-argument. Should it be bio-engineered enhancment of our good-health and lifetime or "ethical" fission? I say Chicken...then Egg.
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
You've been in Physics for too long.
All the humans that succeed in passing their genes are the ones that hold the Bio Credentials... Your half-life is almost reached, so let me help you extend it again...
You are supposed to say, "Hey Baby, would you like to come back to my cell and be the Meiosis of my life?"
DO NOT CONFUSE "Meiosis with Mitosis", or else you will discover where that "Southern" accent within the united States of America came from...we can only speculate on the horrors... BTW, by any chance, are you Southern-"Somthing"?
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
The Sun produces all the energy we will ever need, tends itself and has fuel enough to last for billions of years.
Instead of spending tens of billions of dollars in order to recreate the process here on Earth, we should spend most of the money trying to harness the energy of the giant fusion reactor kindly provided to us by Nature.
That's not to say we shouldn't strive to understand the process(es) of fusion, so we do need the research, but our energy needs are already met.
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
Very well put.
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
I would rather have a joe device powering my car ;)
. htm
use the free and natural orgone (yes orgone, its not a made up word honest!) energy all around us using a joe device. Make your own http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/bp/16/bas01
Some people will believe anything!
For those of you of draft age, consider that this whole mess in the middle east is completely unnecesary(at least in terms of US energy needs).
There's been some work on inertial confinement fusion done at university of Illinois... I'm too lazy to google for any names right now.
IEC is very promising for space propulsion. Tokomaks are way to heavy to carry on board your spaceship.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Maybe I've missed the point and the fusion part of IEC isn't relevant to IEC as a propulsion system. If so, why use IEC as opposed to VASIMR, MPD, Hall thrusters, ...
... needless to say, but it would be very difficult to make this work.)
I've seen some talks on IEC as a propulsion source. (I've seen similar talks about using distorted Tokamaks and the Spheromaks.) It's not out of the question but there are lots of means of accelerating your propellant once you've made the decision that chemical rockets aren't going to cut it.
Once you've moved away from chemical propellants, one of the big questions is: where are you going to get your power for the propulsion system? For a chemical rocket, the energy is largely liberated from the reactants themselves.
If IEC isn't going to give you the energy from fusion, then you still have to carry the weight of some other power source. The talks I've seen proposing IEC as a propulsion source assume the propulsion power would be generated from the fusion reactions themselves (and the IEC produces directed propellant flow by using electrodes distorted from their gridded spherical shape).
However, IEC's fusion yield, for reasons discussed at length previously, is presently infinitesimal. So, if you want to use IEC as a propulsion device, you still need to lug around some other power supply. In such a configuration it isn't clear that IEC is competitive with any of the other advanced propulsion schemes out there.
If you could get IEC's fusion yield up several orders of magnitude, IEC could be a promising fusion based propellant system.
Kevin
P.S. I'm not clear what you are considering as the propellant. If the fusion products are the propellent (which would be nice as the fusion reaction liberate energy), then choice of fusion fuel is very important; I doubt you can make fast neutrons a useful propellant. However, if you are just planning to use the energy liberated from IEC fusion reactions to heat your propellant, then IEC is really just acting as a power supply. (Possibly a compact one though if the unreacted fusion fuel and the propellant are one and the same---using the fusion energy to heat the plasma for thrust purposes
I bought the chemicals plus some concentrated sulphuric acid mail-order from Chem-Lab supplies the name of that company being given to me over the phone by the guy I called to order instructions for making your own rocket engines out of the back of Boys Life. This was before there was such a thing as the Internet for mere mortals.
Now I hear ( from totse.com ( no relation to goatse.cx ) ) that Chem-Lab supplies was shut down for selling drug making precursors, but there are may other chemical supply houses that sell to ameturs on the web.
I remember watching that old war movie ( forgot the name sorry ) where they blow up a Nazi heavy water plant and being amused that I could purchase heavy water from my Chem-Lab supplies catalogue for 14.95/liter.
Eat at Joe's.
Eat at Joe's.
And even then wind can't provide 100%. You need a mix of electricity generation methods. Sometimes the wind won't blow. Sometimes the sun doesn't shine. And besides, a unified power grid would make it too easy for aliens to take out our grid. (Apologies to Alan Dean Foster) Fisson power does produce waste, but in tiny quantities compared to any fossil burners, and the nuke industry averages more than 90% availability. Compare that to solar (50% max, higher near the equator) or wind (wildly variable)
IEC Fusion offers very high thrust to weight levels and very high Isps... some estmates I've read give thrust to wieght of abut 30x and Isps from 5000-15000. Obviously such engines haven't been developed yet or else i'd be writing this from Mars right now :)
Tokomak type fusion will not be good for propulsion unless some sort of materials breakthrough significantly reduces the weight of the confinement apperatus. Such engines seem viable only for battlestar galactica type spacecraft.
Hall thrusters are low thrust only... I looked up VASIMR, but I can't find anything estimating thrust levels or Isp. VASIMR looks like a scheme to get higher thrust levels out of a Hall thruster... however, I doubt that such a device could be constructed out of any materials available on the near horizon... and it looks heavy with all of the magnets... but like I said, I couldn't find any estimtes of Isp or T/W.
Once you've moved away from chemical propellants, one of the big questions is: where are you going to get your power for the propulsion system? For a chemical rocket, the energy is largely liberated from the reactants themselves.
And the best you'll get out of a chemical system is maybe 400 secs of Isp... and that will be with very dangerous and very toxic propellent. If you use a low molecular weight fuel like hydrogen and provide energy to it from another source you can get much, much higher Isps (800-30000 sec). The power can be from solar thermal, solar electric, beamed energy, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, antimatter, etc.
I think an IEC fusion device might be able to be combined synegistically with a fusion device to provide very, very hot hydrogen... without the radioactive exhaust of nuclear-thermal rockets like NIRVA. And if an IEC fusion device could produce a breakeven fusion reaction, then it will be a much better choice for a fusion engine than a tokomak.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Here's some info on VASIMR that estimates Isp of 30,000... it gives some thrust info but I didn't find the system weight info in my quick glance through this so I couldn't really attach meaning to the thrust numbers... anyway here's the link:
n .p df
http://dma.ing.uniroma1.it/users/bruno/Petro.pr
Anyway, the technically feasiblity or infeasibility of systems such as VASIMR isn't really relevent to my original point that IEC fusion systems are very promising in their potential uses as propulsion systems.
Yeah, these systems need really high electric field densities, but every advanced technology has kinks to work out or else someone would have built them by now.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
The Professor unequivocally states that Baird invented television. And I believe him because he's an American.
I'm watching the latest Gemini launch on our big three coconut projection TV right now!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Canada's not a real country, that's just the big empty space where we keep our strategic snow reserve!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Wow, I'm surprised this one ever saw the light of day again.
I just want to let everyone know that for my sophomore and junior-year high school science projects, I built this thing. Cost me about $1200, most of which was the vacuum chamber and neon sign transformer (for the high voltage). I used the high speeds of the electrostatically-contained hydrogen i put in the thing to measure the redshift and blueshift of the atoms (with a spectrometer).
My point isn't that I'm cool, my point is that it's both possible and has been done many times. Check out the journal "Plasma Fusion" put out by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain (sp?), its editors have a bent towards experiments involving electrostatic fusors such as this one. I can also give you email addresses of people who have built many versions of this thing and are quite experts on it. Email me at destes(at)ix.netcom.com if you want more info.
Cheers,
Steve
-Steve
Thanks