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China Claims Successful Fusion Power Test
SeaDour writes, "China claims to have carried out a successful test of its experimental thermonuclear fusion reactor. But what exactly made this test 'successful' is not clear. From the article: 'Xinhua cited the scientists as saying that deuterium and tritium atoms had been fused together at a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for nearly three seconds. The report did not specify whether the device... had succeeded at producing more energy than it consumed, the main obstacle to making fusion commercially viable.'" China is a participant in the 10-nation ITER project to build a fusion reactor in the south of France by 2015. The article quotes the research head of ITER as saying, "It was important for China to show that it is part of the club. Here are English language versions of the Chinese news release: announcement, background.
"We're pleased to announce we are still here to report the results."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
100 million degrees Celsius for nearly three seconds.
I think someone needs a CoolerMaster for that one!
bad news, the coolermaster consumed all the net energy
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Will be tied to their ability to get away from fossil fuels and develop alternative sources. They, not the United States will be the leader in developing the "big thing" that moves us beyond our oil based economy.
It was successful in that it fused deuterium and tritium. Of course, the break even point doesn't matter. To be economical, the reactor realistically has to hit ignition, which only the ITER could hope to do.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Achieving a net energy gain is not the main obstacle to making fusion commercially viable. That has been done quite successfully. There is no problem passing break-even. It is ignition we are trying to achieve now. That is, a fusion reaction which produces enough heat to cause more fusion, provided enough fuel. If you're going to write an article about fusion, at least know something about the state of the field. Journalists should all be required to read the relevant wikipedia articles before publishing something about science.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
...on fusion/cold fusion when Dr. Emma Russel already knows the answer? All someone has to do is seduce her and steal the cards out of her brazier! A much simpler plan. Plus, you get some booty from a hottie while you're at it!
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
This is a fusion reactor. There is no nuclear pile - that would be a feature of a fission reactor, which is a different technology altogether.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Pretty soon even high school students will be making fusion reactors. Oh wait, they already are. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth-Hirsch_fus or
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Magnetic containment. This isn't like fission reactions. There isn't a "pile." Just a couple of grams of non-radioactive deuterium and radioactive but fairly benign tritium. In the event that the magnets somehow fail, the reaction will stop, with just a bit of erosion on the sides of the reactor.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Xinhua have an atrocious track record for truth verses spin, worse than tony blairs pr department. I'm not going to get excited about this one.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
RTFA. It's called the "Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamok" reactor. That means magnetic plasma confinement. It's not that hard to figure out.
And it's a fusion reactor, so there is no "nuclear pile" since that applies only in a fission reactor.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
It's a superconducting tokamak.
The new part is the fact that it uses superconducting magnets. Tokamaks have been used since the 70's.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced they had successfully tried a domestically developed fusion device in the eastern Chinese city of Hefei, Xinhua news agency said.
...
The scientists called the device "the first of its kind in operation in the world", but the report did not specify what tests it had passed.
Xinhua cited the scientists as saying that deuterium and tritium atoms had been fused together at a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for nearly three seconds. - what they are not telling us is that their sofistimacated gizmotron is based on a Yin Yang Dragon technology, which employs 500,000,000 manual workers, each one only having to heat up one atom by 1/5th of a degree by applying the power of the Chi.
Since the labor for all the labor only cost about $5 total, the reactor was able to produce an energy surplus, a feat previously considered to be improbable.
You can't handle the truth.
What goes around, comes around
Engineering is the art of compromise.
the chinese will wtfpwn just about anyone...
2 million man STANDING army?
But that is the law of physics. The extra energy comes from the mass which is converted to energy. Had it said "producing more mass/energy than it consumed", then that would be against the laws of physics.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Good for them.
I hope the test was practical in nature, and will lead to useful contributions from China towards the achievement of practical fusion power.
This is good news. I look forward to following China's future progress and contributions.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Reminds me of the way /.'s truncated posts with the "Read the rest of this comment" links always seem to truncate exactly 2 lines. Does it do this to everyone, or just me?
Redundancy is good And also good.
or even more accurately, Tokamaks have been consuming far more energy than they put out for over 30 years. But governments still throw billions at them rather than use already operating fusion reactor in the sky.
> But that is the law of physics. The extra energy comes from the mass which is converted to energy.
> Had it said "producing more mass/energy than it consumed", then that would be against the laws of physics.
I thought mass was energy? Otherwise, doesn't setting fire to a gallon of petrol qualify as a production of more energy than it consumes?
What is the thought process here? "China tests fusion reactor. What can I say that's topical, and witty, interesting, funny, or insightful? Of course! BASH AMERICA!"
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Guess they'd call that the "America Syndrome"
Though ITER is being built soon, it's being designed as its going up. I'm involved with creating an H- ion beam to inject the plasma (called neutral beam injection). The idea is to fire a high energy beam of neutral hydrogen into the plasma to heat it up (neutral so the atoms can travel through the containment magnets without deflection).
So even if the Chinese managed to build a reactor that beats previous records, it's a long while before fusion powers your home. Nevertheless I consider Fusion research to be one of the most important fields; it takes no imagination to understand what it would mean if nations could be powered on water.
... do they call it The US Syndrome
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Actually, you don't lose mass when you burn something. Chemical combustion converts potential chemical energy into heat, but the end products mass as much as the starting ones. All the energy in a gallon of gas is the energy that went into producing it.
But technically yes, when you talk about fusion reactors you should say "converted more energy from mass than it took to fuse said mass". So the phrasing from the article/summary is technically in error, but most people who know their physics can grasp what they actually mean.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I beleve you can adjust the point that the truncation takes place at in your user profile.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Excellent! Time for another of my "who pissed in YOUR cocoa puffs this morning?" comments.
Seriously dude,it's an obvious joke.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I've read this and this and I'm still a little lost. Could someone with a science background please opine as to what significant hurdles scientists have faced in trying to implement fusion technology in the past?
Any mention of "Mr. Fusion" and a DeLorean in the translation?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Just make a pile of one million Sony-made lithium ion batteries.
Fusion in no time...
Actually, you don't lose mass when you burn something. Chemical combustion converts potential chemical energy into heat, but the end products mass as much as the starting ones.
Actually, you always lose relativistic mass when you release potential energy. A gallon of gasoline is more massive than the sum of the masses of its individual atoms (but not by much), due to the electromagnetic potential energy of the chemical bonds. By general relativity, any place in space with a nonzero mass or energy density is warped. Thus, the potential energy (think of it as being contained in the electromagnetic field between the atoms) actually contributes slightly to the effective mass of the system.
The fraction of relativistic mass lost when you burn a gallon of gas is probably so small as to be unmeasurable by any known measurement device, but it's there (at least if GR is correct).
Yeah, I had mine set to 10 bytes... so everyone's comments are truncated LIKE THI
"Don't Forget to Salt the Fries"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
They're just catching on to what MMORPG designers have known for centuries: moneysinks are good for the economy!
"...just a bit of erosion..."
I can already see a government report using the same term to describe the loss of containment in a fission reactor, too. "Just a bit of erosion; it's barely visble from orbit."
There's no "more or less" about it. Mass is conserved. Energy is conserved. The energy released through burning (oxidation reaction) is the energy that was stored in the chemical bonds making up the fuel.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
If you have some design for a solar power generator that can even come close to the output of a fusion reactor, then please, by all means, post it. Or patent it - I'm sure you'd make a fortune.
Of course I somehow doubt that. After all, photoelectric solar panels are already close to their maximum possible energy effeciency. We could get far better effeciency out of them if we put them in orbit and beamed the power back, given that doing so would get around the problems associated with the atmosphere, but our current space program doesn't even come close to adequate for such a task.
For a point of comparison, fusion is already hitting breakeven. So much for "wasted" money these past thirty years, eh? The fact that something takes time and effort does not make it worthless.
If you seriously want power from sunlight, burn oil or coal. After all, the energy in fossil fuels comes from sunlight introduced into the biosphere millions of years ago. In fact one could argue that fossil fuels are the worlds oldest natural solar battery. And unlike solar energy, which loses much in transmission, oil is easily transportable. You can extract and use it in places where the sun doesn't shine.
Of course, it also burns dirty as hell. Even ignoring climate change, burning fossil fuels releases all sorts of crap into the air, from heavy metals, to soot, to radioactives. But lord knows, if you want to utilize that "fusion reactor up in the sky", you can do so today for all your energy needs - no fancy new tech required.
Plus, who ever said fusion and solar were incompatible solutions? Governments spend a pittance on both of them (yeah it sounds like a lot, but look at their overall budget for comparison), so impling that they favour one over the other is utter rubbish. If you want to get really technical, some of the budget for the space program over the past decades paid for solar panel development, as well as things like fuel cell technology, so it's hardly as though green power has been ignored.
We can pursue solar power in the mean time without the assistance of the governement - go out and buy some for your own use, get your home off the grid (assuming you haven't done so already). No new R&D is required to make solar a viable partial solution to our energy needs, and at the same time, there is little R&D that could ever turn it into a full solution. Conversely we cannot pursue fusion power in the same fashion - the goals are too long term for the private sector to be interested in. Your point is a classic false dichotomy.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Not only have the Chinese created a fusion reaction, they found a way to stamp it out of plastic for three cents a unit.
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yeah, but its Rock Hudson gay - Not emo gay.
Whoops, you're right. I stand corrected.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Yup, the $10k/unit pitchforks they gave to each member of the standing army really cost them alot... Seriously though, China doesnt have the GNP to outfit a 2 million man army with adequate supplies unless its old tech. To simply things: Assume an AK47 at government discount costs $150 per unit. Outfit this weapon as your main weapon for all troops (much like the M16 is today; I know there are diff weapons for diff branches, but we are simplifying here). 2 mil x 150 = 300 million dollars. And thats just the weapon. What about clothes? Training? Body armor? Now throw in vehicles like tanks, a navy, an air force with the super-expensive jets (And the research behind them). See where I'm going? There is a point where you lose effectiveness in your army's power based upon the cost to run it... China may have a standing army of 2 million people... but I'd bet its about the tech level of Iran, if not a little bit better. Going against something like NATO would be a stupid move by the Chinese.
Well, I've worked on a tokamak and we've had disruptions (loss of confinement) and it does basically nothing. There's a limited risk of damage to the machine.
A better question would be how they managed to cram everyone in China into the same place at the same time. Methinks someone used a "noclip" cheat
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
How pure of water do you need, and how hard is it to purify? I'd imagine that while a plant to purify enough water for even a small city would be considerable, it wouldn't be a stretch to have a smaller plant purify water for a fusion reaction. That would mean that you can tap water sources that wouldn't be viable for human consumption, no wars needed. Plus you can power your purification systems from the reactor once it's running.
Only the NSA would think that a spy satellite is needed in order to read a press release.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I agree.
The money spent on fusion is a pittance.
Solar is interesting enough that it does not need much government support.
I think more funding for both would be money well spent.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Actually this is a premise to a series of ecological disasters described in the Reality Dysfunction series of SF books by Peter F. Hamilton.
It's mentioned only peripherally, but the general idea is that the widespread use of fusion power and the vastly increased energy consumption, combined with population and other types of biosphere-bashing, have led to super-storms that basically scour anything in their path.
A little farfetched at present, but an interesting scenario. You'd really have to have "Mr. Fusions" on every car/truck/bus/lawnmower/house, all consuming gigawatts of power, before you would start to come anywhere near to the amount of heat the Earth takes in (and consequently radiates back out, since it stays at a basically fixed average temperature) from the Sun.
However if you did manage to produce some sort of limitless energy source, and just started using it everywhere, it doesn't seem physically impossible that the average temperature of the planet would go up. It would have to -- it's a simple Newton's Law of Cooling problem. The temperature would increase until the energy flowing out into space equaled the energy flowing in from the sun and from other sources; given that the energy flows out at a rate that's proportional to the difference in temperature between the planet and the surrounding space.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So what relation does the Tokamok have to the Typodong missle? :-)
Would it be possible to fire two neutral hydrogen beams directly at one another and upon impact drop the termperature significantly enough that the the atoms would "stick"?
If it is not humanly possible what would be the expected result?
Well, the "Me so horny" prostitute was Vietnamese (from the movie Full Metal Jacket), and it's the Japanese that have problems pronouncing Ls, not the Chinese. So, besides mixing up three different asian countries with distinct languages and cultures, your ethnic insult was spot on. Way to go!
verily.. how strange..
what do you base than statement on? any concrete data?
While I agree with most of your post, I question this:
"...photoelectric solar panels are already close to their maximum possible energy effeciency..."
my understanding is that current PV cells are only around 30% efficient. This suggests to me that there is large room for improvement.
'No new R&D is required....'
This is so true. we don't need to wait for a magic bullet. We already have the technological solutions to our energy problems - we just lack the political and social will to implement the necessary changes.
look, everybody, yet another example of fusion
If I ever invent a time machine, the first mission would be to make sure the process of fusion was renamed to hot non-bomby difficult controllable process, or HNBDCP, to make sure these concepts were never, ever, confused again!
Go to any elite engineering school and take a survey of the top 10% of the students there. I would be shocked if at least 50% of those students are not chinese. I don't mean chinese americans, I mean chinese from china.
Some of the smartest people I know are chinese. What makes you think they can't do it? Is it because they are not white? Are chinese incabable of doing research? Are the chinese by nature liars?
evil is as evil does
You, Sir, have just invented another way of telling people where to "stick it". I salute thee.
<thumbsup>
If I had mod points, I'd have modded both you and EmbeddedJanitor funny. Like Liebnitz and Newton, except with jokes!
Little Debian: America's #1 Snack Distro!
There's no "more or less" about it. Mass is conserved. Energy is conserved.
Nope. Mass-energy is conserved. Anywhere you have potential energy, you have mass. Energy and mass warp spacetime precisely the same way, according to the simple relationship E = mc^2. Wherever you have energy E, you have spacetime warping identical to that caused by a mass of E/c^2. The complete equivalence of the two is one of the most core concepts of relativity.
So when you burn a gallon of gas, then cool and weigh the end products (assuming you had an infinitely accurate scale), you'd measure slightly less mass than the original gasoline.
Of course, if you DON'T cool the end products, you'll get the exact same measurement as before, because the heat actually has a mass (twists the mind, doesn't it?)
Let me clear some things up for you (information from The Military Power of the People's Republic of China 2005 Annual report to congeress by the US Department of Defense):
China's GDP: $1700 Billion
China's Defense budget: $50 Billion (note that this is a Low end estimate.)
Active personell: 2.3 million (note that China has mandatory military service of ~24 months from 18 to 22 years of age so if needed, anybody above 22 and below 40 would be good military material. now think about their population...)
Total personell including reserves: >3.2 million
More data: this time from the CIA Factbook Reserves of foriegn exchange and Gold: $825.6 billion
Another amount for military expenditure: $81.48 billion (slightly larger because this isn't a low estimate)
Both of these publications are available on the web. I advise you read them if you want to hae any decent info about China.
P.S. next time you make asanine comments about something, back them up with hard data.
"If you have some design for a solar power generator that can even come close to the output of a fusion reactor, then please, by all means, post it."
I do but it does have some problems.
It is really really big. It requires a lot of parts. And tends to run a little hot.
I do have a prototype. Look up it is one AU above your head.
Yes I am kidding.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
There seem to be many knowledgable people here today. Do any of you know how they plan to deal with neutron containment at the ITER reactor?
Actually, compared to many forms of energy creation, 30% is pretty high.
What I'd like to see is some programs that improve the ammount of surface area that is covered--maybe bring the cost down to 5% of what it is now, THEN you'd see solar take off--and that's what our governtment could be investing in.
Even if the government were to simply buy enough solar panels to cover the roofs of all the government buildings where weather permits, the quantity would drive down the prices and we'd conserve massive ammounts of fuel and taxpayer money.
Once the prices were lower, industry could start doing the same thing.
Then... Well I have 10 acres I'd love to cover with solar cells (if they weren't so expensive).
I guess the point is that the 30% efficency is not the issue here at all.
Well, IANAEOS (expert on solar), but it's been my understanding that the advances in solar panel effeciency leveled off after we got past a certain point due to physical limitations imposed by thermodynamics. Moreover, I know 30% sounds cruddy, but that's 30% of the sunlight hitting the panel being converted into electricity. From a practical standpoint, that's damn good.
I'd be inclined to wonder how effecient the other power sources we have that use energy originating from the sun compare, in terms of effeciency. For example, fossil fuels have a few million years head start to build up energy stores, and hydro power is using the planet-wide hydrological cycle - both cases where scale negates the need for effeciency.
Direct conversion of sunlight may never reach high levels of power effeciency. In fact I'd say what matters more is economic effeciency (they don't need to be super-effecient if we can mass produce them cheaply enough). However, that isn't a problem that requires government funded R&D so much as it requires widespread adoption by the public. If we started building homes with solar roofs wherever the local climate allows, then I suspect solar will be a more useful part of the energy equation.
This doesn't remove the need for centralized power generation though, which is where fusion would be a godsend. I'm all for a combination approach to solving our energy needs, but I can't think of anything that comes close to fusion for building a clean power plant.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Philo T Farnsworth called, he wants you to know that you're a little late. Please give us a call when you produce a net gain in energy. Until then, thank you for your application. Sincerely, Everyone Else.
Considering that it's communist philosophy "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" human nature is for people to understate the first and overstate the second, so it's not a chinese thing but a communist thing.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
we can bring democracy to China before the 2008 Olympics
2008? I thought the Iraq war was supposed to take no more than 6 months, and now we want to invade China with that limited time period? Do you even know how BIG China is?
I have nothing to say.
I am surprised that nobody else has taken issue with where the world's very first commercial fusion reactor will be built.
I envision some ill-informed, or just plain stupid, french person getting upset that it will be built in his backyard. He might be afraid of high voltage power lines or something.
I envision Spain folk complaining that they cannot differentiate between the sun coming up, and the ominous glow of their fusion brothers to the east.
I envision German politicians wondering if any funny gasses will head their way in the atmosphere.
I envision china, russia, and americans getting kind of upset that they have put so much time, research, and money towards GIVING AWAY the worlds first non-poluting energy source. Limitless power, research, knowledge, and experience...given to the french to control.
I just see a lot of people complaining.
I also envision the french complaining again...when after another 15 years Germany, Portugal, England, Russia, China, India, Sudan, USA, and Mexico all have significantly larger, and more efficient fusion reactors available to them. Then France will be jealous that they ended up being the guinnee pig and have this old fashioned albatross as an energy and administrative nightmare.
odd.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Yes, of course it was a joke. However, I am having a lot more fun than I thought reading the posts of people who thought I was serious.
;)
My parent post has already been modded down, so I take it some mod was none too amused, wasn't bright enough to identify it as sarcasm, or else just thought that pithy commentary on the Iraq/Iran situation is misplaced here. It is indeed offtopic--especially considering how little technological overlap there is between fusion development and nuclear weapons development--but I'm having some pretty consistent fun nevertheless.
yup and here's how you can fix it :
http://www.osix.net/modules/article/?id=793/Slipping shoelaces ?
Sorry I can't resist but Hydrogen fusion would burn through the ceiling!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The cold fusion cells just keep chugging along, producing excess energy indifferent to the army of physicists wishing they'd just stop making life difficult and play by the rules.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
Are we talking hot or cold fusion here? Cold fusion doesn't need magnetic containment. And if hot, why does the story say net energy gain is the challenge? Any garden variety H-Bomb will do that... but harnessing all that energy is a slight problem.
No, cold fusion needs media containment.
JET was the highly successful predecessor to ITER.
If I ever invent a time machine I on the other hand I'm going to something more creative with it. I'm going to go back an put a six pack of beer in the grave with the first Neanderthal found. Then I would come back and watch the fun when they dug it up.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
>Dr. Edward Teller in the 50's but those weren't exactly practical power producing devices
Which didn't stop Dr. Teller from suggesting generating power by producing steam in the chamber left by an underground explosion. I seem to remember that the idea was to set off additional bombs if the temperature dropped too low.
It causes a million cases of cancer a year in the US alone (more than smoking does!). We must immediately shut it down and sue the manufacturer.
You may not know, but South Koreans are not Communists.
However, I am a scientist. And, guess what, my wife is from South Korea. We've had a number of discussions about Hwang Woo-suk (the scientist in question).
I can state, as a scientist, that there's a lot of pressure to get certain results. If you don't get some kind of results you don't get grants. You don't get grants, you can't continue your research.
My wife states, as a South Korean, that there can be a lot of cultural pressure to succeed and that it can be quite overwhelming at times.
I think that the GP (my GGP) was saying that due to all the cultural pressures it may be too tempting for Chinese scientists to fake results.
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
Since you are modded offtopic, I will reply as AC. I didn't read the GP, but as a "telephone test fluent" speaker of Cantonese (American white-boy), and a passable speaker of Mandarin, I can state unequivocally that Chinese (from China and Taiwan) have trouble with the letter L. It is just not the problem that most people think it is (it is unrelated to the R sound). The following is my experience based on verbal interaction with ladies^W people from Guandong (Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhongshan, Taishan, Chaozhou, Xinhui, and Kaiping), Hubei(Wuhan), Shanghai, Beijing , Tianjin, and Taiwan (Xinzhu and Taibei):
(1) as a final sound in words like "table" (tay-bo), "pool" (poo-), etc. This derives from the fact that in Cantonese/Mandarin the only voiced consonantal endings are M/N/NG.
(2) as an initial (Southern Chinese speakers and people from Western Hubei). It sometimes comes out as the letter N (the reverse is more common, N coming out as L).
This pattern is fading in Hong Kong Cantonese over the last 30 years. The solution was to eliminate N as an initial across the board in Cantonese (almost, everyone now says "lei5 ho2 ma3, but many still say "ni1 do6" for "here"). In English articulation the letters N and L differ little, with the significant difference being L having lateral airflow around the tongue and exiting the mouth. N is all nose. Many Cantonese speakers when they say English words being with L, the initial sound seems almost to be N and L simultaneously with the N starting a few milliseconds before the L.
The conversion of N to L in HK leads to humorous statements from British educated Cantonese speakers saying after a tough day, "I'm completely lacquered." Of course they mean "knackered", both are funny in their way.
Congratulation on having the wang2 ba1 removed from your dan4 (828) (inside joke to parent).
I'm pretty sure that happens here in the capitalist west too. It's not a communist thing but a human thing.
I got to see a laser demo in high school while attending a math competition. Assuming that low power meant "incapable of causing harm", I looked right into a lazer with both eyes to impress a friend.
What a complete idiot.
Amazingly, my night vision started returning about 7 years later!
science is a religion
He invented the television bebore working on table top fusion devices, a.k.a. fusors.
Check out www.fusor.net
science is a religion
Actually, what's needed is solar cells that have an operational life long enough that their power generation produces more money than they cost to make.
Right now, it takes tax incentives, over the 15 year expected life of current offerings, to pretty much break even on cost.
If those panels last 30 years instead of 15, even if their efficiency is less than 20%, there'll still be a payoff. Right now, the only payoff Solar has, is the absence of costs the petroleum energy very efficiently shifts to other areas (ie. pollution, and war over oil fields is a cost we all bear, but the petroleum industry does not factor into the cost at the pump). Solar doesn't involve any of these costs - but because the petroleum industry shifts these costs, petroleum seems cheaper.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Let's not forget that on the same topic of nuclear fusion American scientists have also been known to have spread misinformation by claiming to have perfected cold water fusion.
If the pattern goes 9am, 10am, 11am, why isn't noon 12am?
The report did not specify whether the device... had succeeded at producing more energy than it consumed, the main obstacle to making fusion commercially viable
If it lasted only three seconds, it was probably not self-sufficient.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Since you say you're involved with the ITER project, can I ask one thing that I have never seen answered about it ? Here: how do the ITER people plan to fight the intense Bremsstrahlung cooling of the plasma due to heavy ions being ripped off the walls of the reactor ? AFAIK this cooling makes sustainable fusion in a Tokamak impossible.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Go to any elite engineering school and take a survey of the top 10% of the students there. I would be shocked if at least 50% of those students are not chinese. I don't mean chinese americans, I mean chinese from china.
I call bullshit (on your statistic, not your general point).
I'm in the Stanford CS PhD program, and there are surprisingly few Chinese. Sure, there are plenty of Asians, but a reasonable fraction of them are Korean or Indian, and there are plenty of Caucasians (disproportionately many Greeks), Hispanics and Jews. I've only noticed a few Chinese from China, but I'm oblivious that way. I have no idea who the top students are, but if you count the whole PhD program, it's certainly not true.
At Harvard it wasn't true either (of course, Harvard is not an engineering school). If anything, there were more Jews than Chinese at the top, and almost all of the Chinese were 2nd or 3rd generation; this was true both undergrad and CS grad (though not as much of math grads).
At MIT, from what I know, it wasn't true either: most of the elite students I knew there were either Jewish or Caucasian. I didn't know that many, though.
At my summer jobs, there have been a lot of smart Chinese people, but only a few of them were from China.
At the math olympiad programs the years I went, half the team was Chinese, but only one or so each year from China. Of the students there in general, maybe a third were Chinese. (China wins the olympiad almost every year, though.)
This is not to say that Chinese people are stupid. Just like you, I know plenty of really smart Chinese people, although most of them are 2nd or 3rd generation.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Also, solar power is not that green, either; the manufacturing process of photovoltaic cells generates toxic waste. It's better than burning coal but still not exactly perfect. Thus, it would be nonsense to treat solar power as the non plus ultra of power generation. It makes for a useful addition to our pool of power generation technologies, though (especially one that can be added everywhere for small increases in power generation - you just install solar panels on a building's rooftop).
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
2 million man STANDING army?
2 million man fusion powered standing army.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
If communist propaganda is lying, then yes, they're huge liars.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
I was at a dinner tonight where one of my colegues was irritating our Chinese guests by making comments about the lack of a power grid in China, the chinese gentleman was getting rather defensive. I remembered this articl and mentioned it is a positive light. It seems that he was very aware of, and proud of, the test. It saved the dinner party. So, this, even if it might not be a great scientific advance, was usefull to me.
d00d, the smallest solar cell powering an LCD calculator produces more net power than the largest fusion reactor. think about it.
Considering that I cut/pasted the name from the article and just added the bold tag, I refuse to accept responsibility for the typos.
;-)
I nebber macke tipowgrafical mistrakes...
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Right, because technology never improves beyond the prototype stage. Plus, while you may generate "some" electrictiy with solar, it'll never replace either fossil fuels or nuclear as a centralized means of power generation. As a distributed means of generation, it shows promise, so it is indeed a partial solution - but I must stress that it will never by itself be a full solution. Other tech is needed to have a completely green economy, particularly if we want to get rid of fossil fuels in our cars and other vehicles.
As for "fusion reactor may never work", have you even been paying attention? They're already starting to work! Hell, RTFA, the Chinese are begining to develop them - and what they're doing today is still far less than what ITER can accomplish. Sticking your head in the sand and saying that "it'll never work", when we've already gotten past some of the hardest obstacles (namely, actually getting a controlled fusion reaction, and maintaining it for any duration under confinement) is willfully stupid. It's like claiming we're never going to put a man in space after we'd already sent unmanned vehicles up. The fact that it's taken thirty years to get this far with fusion is a testament to the slow nature of R&D, and a sign that fusion projects are badly underfunded (despite what the GP seems to think).
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
That's just because they're the "pick of the litter." With arare execption (I knew one), only the smartest people in China get the chance to go to US colleges. The people who don't make the cut attend Chinese colleges. This is as-opposed to the US applicant pool for colleges, where some less-capable students are admitted for many possible reasons (sports, "legacy" child of alum, racial quotas, less applicants than previous year, etc.)
You just THINK foreigners are statistically smaller, but the fact is you're not seeing a statistically random sample group.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
As someone who is descended at least partially from "peasant classes" here in America, I would like to point out that given the opportunity, at least some of these "peasants" will end up contributing to the advancement of science and technology. Nearly all of my great-grandparent's generation, and my father's parents were farmers. My dad worked his way up into management from being a truck driver and mechanic, my mom put herself through nursing school, and together they put me and my 3 other siblings through college. Two of us have advanced degrees, and all of us have worked in fields requiring a high degree of technical knowledge.
One of the reasons why our "peasant class" has shrunk is that this is a typical American story. 75 years ago, most Americans worked away in factories, mines, or on the farm, for wages that provided for survival and little more. The thing that made the difference was that most children of the era got at a good enough basic education in reading and math so at least the brighter minds of the era were able to see a future beyond the meatpacking plant, coal mine, or dairy farm where many of their parents toiled away their lives.
For China to truly be an economic powerhouse that delivers levels of prosperity to all of its people, it must break down the barriers of ignorance and cultural stratification that keep the peasant class intact. But here is some serious food for thought: If China can deliver a First-World education to only 25 percent of its population, their economic power in the world will eventually surpass ours. America, with its own educated workforce and natural resources will continue to do relatively well, but it will fade as the main focus on the world stage in a manner similar to how Western Europe has faded since WWII. Most of Western Europe is still relatively prosperous, but they are not where the action is, generally speaking.
In the early history of the USA, Americans sent their best and brightest to the great learning centers of Europe to finish their education. Eventually, the universities and colleges here in America became good enough that Americans looked to Harvard or MIT for inspiration, instead of Oxford or Cambridge. Today, the Asians look to America for higher learning, but it is becoming less necessary to actually come to America, since research papers and other important publications are more likely to be on a university web server than tucked away on a shelf in a dusty old ivy covered building. For some things, particularly experiments in High-Energy Physics, there is no good substitute for having your own multi-billion dollar research facility on the scale of Argonne or Stanford and an educated staff to run it in order to do leading-edge research. However, for much of the training that needs to take place for the majority of engineers, physicians, IT people, and business management professionals, a classroom in Shanghai works about as well as one in Boston.
China is still trying to find itself in the sense of what it is best able to do in the long-run. China is dabbling in Physics, but it is also a formidable force to be reckoned with in other fields as well, particularly Medicine. Manufacturing, which is carrying the economy right now, is mostly built on technology derived from other countries, and is fueled by cheap labor. For many products, making them with secondhand machinery or not quite bleeding edge tech is good enough if you have cheap enough labor, but as wages rise and newer technologies emerge, they will see their industries decline as they did here 30 years ago, unless they reinvest their current profits into research and education to create leading edge technology of their own.
"At Harvard it wasn't true either (of course, Harvard is not an engineering school)."
I would not expect a lot of minorities in any of the ivy league schools. They are by and large affirmitive action for rich people, movie stars, models and such. The main criterea for entrance is fame and fortune and the main crieterea for graduation is "went to some ofo my classes and didn't stay high the entire time".
I am not saying that there are no smart people at harvard or princeton clearly there are. It's just that they are also full of brainless dumbassess who manage to get accepted and graduate purely because they are rich or famous (see dubya).
I remember one time watching the Howard Stern show where he as asking models questions. One of the models was asked "what is at the center of the solar system". She could not answer. Howard gave her all kinds of clues basically doing every but giving her the answer and she still couln't answer. Howard asked her if she has a degree and she said she did... from harvard!!!
evil is as evil does
I would not expect a lot of minorities in any of the ivy league schools. They are by and large affirmitive action for rich people, movie stars, models and such. The main criterea for entrance is fame and fortune...
That may have been true 20 years ago, but it isn't true anymore.
and the main crieterea for graduation is "went to some ofo my classes and didn't stay high the entire time"...
Bold words from someone who can't spell "criterion". The pressure at MIT at least is pretty insane.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Yeah right and japan has chinese enrolled too (my left shoe). No its because outsourcing to china is embarassing. Now if you had said top 15% and the most expensive I really might have thought that now do they go to grad school and teach or do they get a job making the top 1%? Hardware? No IBM CAT etc are fine. Look when I worked in software it was mathmaticians (US of course Newton duh) -> Russ (bored and cold and starving) -> Chinese (achieved hot sauce ignition) there is a flow chart. Tyan the best they got lenovo cheap lots of medium podunk. Its a density thing i'm afraid and we are distributed and we have the power of the dollar and space. Chinese extremely good at long haul technical save the cash. Family business. R&D are you joking man :) Don't give a china man some software they will smoke it (they are good at math and are excellent technically very very smart) if they think they can get hardware out of it (or vice versa). I've seen them in action scary stuff especially on our turf. They apply speed brakes when it comes to conversing over here though at least with business people its not their place? Uh uh too competitive not nice no how.
That said if China doesn't win this argument eventually something is wrong. The US is seriously inbred and culturally inept and it shows in some ways but our heirarchy looks to be in danger (mad cow disease farms drying up etc). We are recycling decades for goodness sakes. Korea has a shot I hope, they could smoke the chinese for stretches look at japan.
There are other pockets of highly intricate engineers in exotic locations. I'm glad I can't see them all at the same time.
Far out man -Chong