College Freshman Builds Fusion Reactor

Aiua writes "The Deseret Morning News is reporting that a Utah State University freshman has built a nuclear fusion reactor and compares how the student is similar to Philo T. Farnsworth (the inventor of the television and designer of the plans for a fusion reactor)."

Comments

Cool...

[RIAAwakka_nakka_bakk]

This is a great sign that not all kids and young adults have weak or corrupt minds. The ability of an American college freshman (or anyone else his age) to do this with the parts he used is simply amazing.

On the other hand, wouldn't the FBI be looking hard at him now that has built something like this?

Re:Cool...

[Greyfox]

Because like most Slashdot readers and unlike Homer Simpson, the FBI doesn't know the difference between fission and fusion. They just see the word "Nuclear" in front of it and add you to their teorrist watchlist.

Re:Cool...

[afidel]

Yes and he will go to work at Fermilab or one of the other national labs and get to play with more big toys then he could ever dream of. It won't be until he is much older that he will even really think about the consequences of his lifes work. The outcome of that self reflection seems to be evenly split between those who think they have done good for humanity and those who disagree.

So... not much, right?

[KRzBZ]

I mean, it's cool he could do this and all, but there's already 30 of these around the country, they don't produce any excess energy, other than that from what will soon be hundreds of little slash.fingers merrily typing away... Misleading intro to this story - I was all set for some kind of great breakthrough, and instead I get the equivalent of a SCO press staement - a story, some hot air, but nothing of real substance. Or am I missing some greater consequence of this?

Re:So... not much, right?

[EnderWiggnz]

yeh, your missing it:

some 18 year old kid was able to do it.

thats pretty f'in impressive...

Just some of my insight

[rzbx]

He isn't a die hard nerd that sits around reading books all day, getting straight A's, and spending time doing various things the stereotypical nerd would do. It goes to show that we need to understand that people don't all see things the same, learn the same, and fit in the same model we believe works so well. This college student is more a mechanic than any typical scientist.
I point all this to intellectual property. He was fortunately able to obtain most of his material cheaply and easily, but what about most hobbyists that want to fidle with new technology? Where do they get the money for new tools, machines, etc? If we applied an open source model to intellectual property and treated ideas not as property, but as what they really are, then we could accelerate scientific and technological progress greatly. What this college student did is quite amazing. The thing he built is only found in top notch institutions. I just think we need more plagiarism prevention, not patents. Btw, I'm sorry for being somewhat off-topic, but I feel that there is an important lesson to be learned here.

Re:Just some of my insight

[dasmegabyte]

Yes. The lesson is that if you get off your ass you can do interesting things. I don't see where intelelctual property comes into it. In fact, one could just as easily argue that, since he did nothing more than cobble together the type of generator that has been done before, that he has not advanced "science" at all. Sure, he's advanced his own knowledge, it certainly is an interesting and awesome project, but science hasn't moved an inch. That's why he only got SECOND place for this project -- he's shown he's a really talenter tinkerer, not the next Heisenberg.

As for applying an open source model to ideas...well, we already do that, stupid, it's called peer review. It manifests itself in the form of these cool, incredibly terse publications about the size of silver age comic books, with the words JOURNAL OF at the front of the title and a bunch of syllables at the end. This system is how we "know" cold fusion isn't real, or at the very least it isn't going to be easy. The methodology of experimentation is not prevented by intellectual property law. Patenting something doesn't mean nobody else understands how it works, or prevent you from improving upon it. Pantent law PROTECTS improvements. There is no DMCA for this sort of thing, no FBI agent will come to your lab. In the biotech field you can make as many AIDS cocktails as you like for research. Steal the recipe right out of the JAMA if you like. Shit, Glaxo wants you to. The more publications there are that back up their findings, the easier it is to get the FDA to lay off on them.

All patent law does is assure that the first guy to come up with a brilliant new concept will be allowed to make money from technologies based off of it. That's how researchers live...selling ideas that can be made into profits. Taking that away from them doesn't help science, mate.

Re:Title is misleading

[Detritus]

From the description I read, it is nuclear fusion. It's just on a small scale.

Neutron generator tubes, that rely on deuterium-tritium fusion to generate neutrons, have been available for decades.

Re:ugg think about it

[Little Brother]

Heck, I'd be growing diamonds in my back yard if I could afford to buy the super huge vintage world war 2 press at an industrial site down the road from me ... but they'd just be an inefficient curiosity too.

That is exactly why this kid DOES deserve a prize. He managed to make the device without a $10,000 research/developement grant. No he didn't create anything revolutanary, but he did accomplish an extraordinary acheivement. I'll drink to him tonight. (not that I really need an excuse)

Two cultures

[panurge]

The British academic C P Snow spent a lot of time arguing that there are now two cultures which really do not interact: Liberal arts (favored by the people who have the power in society, by the way) and science/engineering. There is very little cross fertilisation. Part of the reason that scientists and engineers for the most part get screwed is that they have this boring addiction to things that are testable, and to objective standards of truth. People who are basically prepared to put spin on anything set off with a huge advantage.

And why this apparently off-topic minor rant? Because we're seeing it here. The ones who probably can't even change a bicycle tire say "Oh that's easy, probably just followed the instruction book", not having the slightest clue about how difficult it is to make something from disparate parts. The ones who have got a clue or have been involved in projects like this have an idea of how difficult it really is, but actually they have no idea of how huge and insuperable the barrier is to 99% of the population - because they themselves are hardwired to know where to start.

It's about disparate rewards. The same level of skill and application this guy showed, applied to basketball or acting, might get him a multimillion dollar income. Why don't we perceive someone who spends hours bouncing a little ball around as being sad and geeky and having too much time on his hands? Why does someone who pretends to be other people, often not very well, get paid so much more than an astronaut or a fighter pilot who does something really, really difficult and dangerous?

Naive ramblings, I guess, but in the conversion of the human race from savannah apes to civilisation, it wasn't the actors and the basketball players that worked out how to bang the rocks together and how to get one stone to stick on top of another.