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Michigan Teen Creates Fusion Device
Josh Lindenmuth writes "The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Thiago Olson, a 17 year old Michigan teen, was able to create a small fusion device in his parents' basement. The machine uses a 40,000 volt charge and deuterium gas to create the small reaction, which he says looks like a 'small intense ball of energy.' The teen's fusion device is obviously not a self-sustaining reactor, but it still shows how fusion technology is becoming more accessible. Hopefully this points to a future where large scale fusion reactors are both economical and widely used."
What is there in the water in Michigan? A few years ago a teen in Michigan created a nuclear fission reactor; now this guy one ups him and creates fusion ?
Becoming more accessible? Electrostatic fusion was first demonstrated in the 20s.
How does a 17 year old come by deuterium? I mean the bush administration has a fit when Iran tries to buy some, and in this country you don't even have to be 18 to get it?
I'm lost.
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Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
His site: http://fusor.net/board/view.php?site=fusor&bn=fuso r_images&key=1150855195
Can anyone independently verify that fusion is actually occurring here? Is he really creating Helium in the chamber?
If he really managed it, the real news will be when he manages to procreate. Those 14KeV fusion neutrons play very interesting games with DNA. That is if he really managed to get any fusion to succeed which I doubt.
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Hopefully this points to a future where large scale fusion reactors are both economical and widely used.
Either that, or it points to a future where large scale fusion reactors are widely used in parents' basements.
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but his mother wouldn't let him. Quite right too. There's way too much unjustified exaggeration these days. Far more dangerous than a glowing ball of energy.
From TFA his mother wouldn't let him build a hyperbolic chamber.
Definition of hyperbolic
exaggerated: enlarged beyond truth or reasonableness; "had an exaggerated (or inflated) opinion of himself"; "a hyperbolic style"
Take the back cover off of a really old TV and tap the tip of a screwdriver across the back circuit of the picture tube. A ball of energy should melt the tip of the screwdriver and/or throw you back 20 feet and/or turn your hair white.
What did he use to shield the neutrons or did he just suck them up?
Personally, if I put a dilute gas in a vacuum chamber, apply a voltage and see a small ball of fire, I think plasma. Why is this not just a plasma? How do we know it's fusion?
And what is a "hyperbolic chamber"???????
Note: creating a plasma at 17 years old in a garage would still be very cool. Maybe not slashdot-front-page cool, but still cool.
I was thinking that perhaps it is that sort of glowing blue that you get in movies. Or perhaps the glowing green that gets associated with radiation?
OK, congrats that this seems to have worked. But a teen experimenting at home with 40.000 volt and Deuterium - am I the only one who thinks this is frightening?
Idha khatabahum lijahiluna qalu salaman
Sounds like a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
so really nothing new.
I think you're confusing deuterium with plain old hydrogen. You can extract hydrogen from water with electrolysis, but separating the deuterium (representing a vanishingly small percentage of the liberated hydrogen) from that would still be, to put it mildly, less than trivial.
IIRC, commercial heavy water plants do something that takes advantage of the slight difference in boiling point between D2O and H2O, and do a very delicate fractional distillation, over and over and over. The energy involved to do it is pretty immense, and it would be tough to do except under very carefully controlled conditions. Hydrogen sulfide may also be involved at some point in the process, as well, at least according to this WP article.
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I'm sorry... but while this teenagers work is certainly commendable and nothing to sneeze at (in fact, Large engineering firms such as Siemens seem to take an interest in him). His work does nothing to further research in the field. Non-sustaining fusion reactors have been around for decades, and its been widely known how to build one for at least 20 years. For most people, the cost is the limiting factor. Why would you want to spend $50k-100k on something that uses more energy than it produces?
Now when we finally get a sustainable fusion reaction that produces more energy that it uses, that would be something to write about!
Yahma
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Any kid who ever built a Van De Graff generator has played with far more than 40kV... I mean, that's only a few centimeters worth of spark at STP. If you've ever gotten 3-4" sparks in dry air, you're playing with way higher voltage than that.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This is a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor . They are no big deal! Effectively it is like a vacuum tube, where an electrical charge is used to accelerate D+ ions until they smack into each other. No biggie! The energy levels needed for fusion are very small and can be achieved in a hand-held device. These fusors are used as laboratory neutron sources.
So if fusion is so easy, and if it's such a great power source, why aren't we using it right now to generate power? The Fusor device can easily make fusion happen but, for various reasons, it is not energy-positive fusion. The energy you get out of it cannot be capture in a useful way to get more energy than was put into it. So they're great for neutrons but not much else.
If someone could figure out a design that would be energy-positive then we would have something amazing but there's nothing there for that right now.
dont forget to keep Dee Dee out of lab..
He's never gonna get laid anyway, so why should he worry about it?
Making a fusion reactor is relatively easy, albeit somewhat dangerous, like you said.
From here:
As with any nuclear-related project, safety must be taken into consideration.
[...]
* Radiation; this should be the least of your worries until about 15,000 volts of acceleration potential. At this point, x-rays start to emanate from viewports due to electron and ion bombardment of metals in the chamber. Always use a camera or mirror to peer into the viewport. X-rays can cause burns and lead to cancer. Above 40,000 volts, x-rays will start to come through the stainless steel chamber walls. At this point, you will need to use lead shielding. Neutron radiation is the most dangerous form of radiation known to man, but the fusor does not put out enough of it to be dangerous until about 45,000 volts. It can easily be shielded with water, wax or plastic. You can also minimize your exposure by standing well away from the fusor, or by operating it for only 20 minutes per week.
More safety info.
Really, it's that pesky part where we try to actually make it produce energy and break even that is stumping us right now.
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I'm in the process of this very thing... on a much larger scale... in my dining roo+++NO CARRIER
this is the statement of an asshole. Why make an almost asinine comment like this?... a 17 year old applied himself in a very unsual way that shows intelligence, aptitude, application, and determination. Researched, developed and built a remarkable machine. Sure, it's been demonstrated since the 20's, but you probably read about it in a book at best. Or looked up on wikipedia that it was first done in the 20's.
Most people just read about things. Others do things. Knowing things and not doing is borderline redundant. Hearing of something being done for a long time and never even remotely applying yourself even within 1%, and then criticising and reducing the absolutely remarkable efforts of others is borderline criminal. Get a life, but more importantly, get some perspective.
I'd love to see a picture of your fusion machine, or anything even remotely demonstrating the independent application of intelligence. People that make these kinds of comments rarely partake in anything of the kind.
Alternatively, he might have bought a small quantity from a scientific supplier. Even the Government is going to realise, especially if his teachers wrote in, that the size of fusion bomb you can build with a couple of grammes of heavy water and the tritium from a beta light is less of a threat to the US than one NRA member with a hangover and a grudge against his ex-wife.
Pining for the fjords
I love bylines! They're so incriminating.
Like GINA DAMRON, the reporter who doesn't listen, and can not know the difference between a "Hyperbaric Chamber" and a [sic] Hyperbolic Chamber, which sounds oddly shaped, but unremarkable.
Good on you Gina, keep up that keen reporting.
I'm looking forward to your report on the Frictional Distillation process.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
You can get Deuterium Oxide from http://www.unitednuclear.com/chem.htm (and probably many other chemical suppliers) from which you can make deuterium gas.
It is a by-product of charcoal filtered 'Unobtainium' - I hear the rus'kies have it for sale by the kilo...
And people keep telling us that USA kids don't do science. Shit.
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;)
Amazed that no one's posted this yet in a story about amateur physics
The FBI hasn't fallen on him like a ton of rectangular building blocks yet?
Forgot... No, it's not an anti-catholic site. It's supposed to be "autopope" but that got messed up in Internet pre-history.
Bizarrely enough, not only are they funding it (along with the rest of the developed world), they will sign the consortium agreement today.
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A quick look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth-Hirsch_Fus or reveals that this is a fairly simply, but clever experiment. He is a bright kid, and one day he'll most likely become a physicist. Or perhaps not - whereas the device is simple enough to build, I haven't been able to find a place to buy deuterium, unless you want to talk to a guy called Al (last name of 'Qaeda').
Uh, let's write a story that make it look like he "creates" a standard Fanrnsworth-Hirsch Fusor (built for science fair projects, low level neutron sources, and just shits & grins for 50 years) and make the kid look like a genius.
Technical skill? Yes. Advanced knowledge? Yes.
But primarily, ability to follow directions available everywhere? Yes.
He may very well be a genius, but it is as likely that he's a genius at self-promotion as anything. There are many high-quality science projects he could have done, but add the words "nuclear" and "fusion" and you attract a lot of media attention. He'll make a good string theorist...
JD
Where did he get the Deuterium from?
It's like this: You take two frisbies, a remote control toy truck, and a bottle of shampoo, and wait for a stormy night...
geek. lawyer.
I, for one, welcome our new teenage basement-dwelling fusion reactor overlords!
Depends on the materials. Fire is energy, and can be various colors, depending on what's being reacted (burned), as well as the oxygen mix, etc. (which is also part of the fuel). Energy can be every color in the visible spectrum, as well as outside our visual spectrum (we can't 'see' radiation, but it's a form of energy). As far as what color was seen with the 'small intense ball of energy' I would guess white light, because if it wasn't, you'd assume they'd describe it with the color (IE: "small intense ball of blue energy"). But it's just a blind guess based on the wording, not the type of fusion.
Please do some basic fact checking before commenting. This thing is a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor. The design is common knowledge, decades old and is proven to work. No pseudo science involved, period. Your comment would have potentially made sense if we were talking cold fusion, or if the kid had claimed to have made a toroidal reactor.
Moreover, differentiating between a nuclear reaction and a chemical one is easy; the former is going to give off some highly recognizable forms of radiation (X-rays are specifically mentioned in TFA, and IIRC Fusors give off neutrons as well).
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Or perhaps the glowing red that gets associated with COMMUNISM!
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Hrmm, that gives me some great ideas for RP city of villains characters ^_^
...
I know this is off-topic, but when I hear people refer to the NRA as overheated and overpoliticized gun owners, I sigh, and think, "They didn't used to be...."
I remember when I was in Boy Scouts during the 1970's and I took the dreaded "Rifle and Shotgun" merit badge.
Back then, the NRA was a gun safety and training organization. They struck everyone as being straight-forward and calm, more interested in making sure that people knew how to prevent gun accidents and how to responsibly own firearms.
Then things changed, and they transformed themselves into a political organization - and now they're either seen as "the safeguard of the American way" or "crazy gun-toting fascists," depending on whose overheated rhetoric was heard last.
Perhaps this should be seen as a warning to other groups - once you enter the political fray, you become a political animal. Or in the words of the Punisher, "The means always screws up the ends."
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
TVs have very dangerous capacitors. The function of capacitors that you unhappily discovered is something like a temporary battery.
See, a real battery can only push so much energy out per second (I think batteries are usually defined in milliamp hours (mAh)). So what you do is you start pushing charge (electrons) onto a capacitor, and then when you need a real big quick burst of energy (like, say, to shoot an electron at a TV screen) the cap can give you that high amount of current or voltage very quickly.
Another use is to smooth power signals. You're getting sent AC voltage in the wall, which oscillates above and below zero volts. This gets rectified at the home so that it's either above or at 0 volts. Then, this gets filtered through a series of capacitors (and lots of other stuff, too; Zener diodes FTW) to provide (more) consistent voltage, instead of a rising and falling voltage. In essence, it's acting as a battery for us while the voltage is lower than what the circuit needs.
Capacitors are also very important in analog filters and a lot of other Electrical Engineering voodoo.
:(){
OK if the word deuterium sounds too much like a physics lesson for you, does heavy water sound any friendlier?
In case skipping down a couple of paragraphs is also too 'lessony' here's the bit you're after:The kid can obtain the stuff because he's not afraid of physics lessons. =P
This is a Farnsworth Fusor. See Wikipedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor/ for info on this type of device, which is VERY OLD, reasonably well-characterized, and most definitely NOT an energy-generation device.
Fusors use far more power than they generate. The idea is a pair of spherical grids charged to 50K volts differential. Deuterium gas is a welding supply item. Gas hits the outer grid, ionizes, and is propelled at ultra-high speed to the exact center of the grid.
The drawback is the inefficiencies: There is no known design (and some theoretical work saying it is impossible to a achieve such a design) which does not have significant heat losses to impacts of the gas on the inner grid. This generates random gas, which impedes the movement of the ions, etc.
It is also known as Electrostatic fusion.
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I'm not sure what alpha male you've been spying on in the changing room, but even with my limited knowledge of other men's packages, I can safely say that there's only supposed to be ONE "wrinkled brown sack." If yours come individually wrapped you should consider yourself a frea...unique snowflake.
While there are a lot of comments about this being a well-known device for fusion, it seems the practical application of this is a neutron source. The experience of actually building the machine is invaluable. If you've ever built something complex, you know that simply knowing about how something is built and actually having built it are very different things. By building, he's likely gained a lot of practical knowledge that can be applied to future projects. He could describe the process, drawing from his own experience instead of just what he's read.
Newsorthy? Not necessarily, but that's no reason to make it seem like what he's done is without merit.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
And people keep telling us that USA kids don't do science. Shit.
Shh, you aren't allowed to tell anyone outside the US our secret. We've never stopped doing science. It's just that this kid won't be remembered and used as an example to follow by the student body. That sports team that once made it to state or actually won at state; those guys the teachers and students can name most of them off the top of their head. We still have lots of kids that do science and think that its fun, but you'll hardly hear about it except maybe on slashdot, because "science is boring" and we don't have half-time cheerleaders and a band supporting us.
"Someday, I'll build a death-ray! Then they'll all be sorry they laughed at me!
Stupid coach."
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The main industrial use of the Farnsworth Fusor is as a neutron source. Anyone trying this at home needs to understand that the neutron flux near the reactor can be deadly. (Wikipedia says amateur Fusors generate about 3x10^5 neutrons / sec.) Fortunately, they escape in all directions, so the density falls with the square of the distance. Just don't get too close while it's running. It's a good idea to have a detector for ionizing radiation and be familiar with exposure levels humans can tolerate. (Any good links?) Remember the neutron bomb? Killed people - not things.