Ultra-Dense Deuterium Produced

Omomyid was among several readers writing in about the production of microscopic amounts of ultra-dense deuterium by scientists at the University of Gothenberg, in Sweden. A cubic centimeter of the stuff would weigh 287 lbs. (130 kg). UDD is 100,000 times more dense than water, and a million times more dense than deuterium ice, which is a common fuel in laser-ignited fusion projects. The researchers say that, if (big if) the material can be produced in large quantities, it would vastly improve the chances of starting a fusion reaction, as the atoms are much closer together. Such a D-D fusion reaction would be cleaner than one involving highly radioactive tritium. Many outlets have picked up the same press release that Science Daily printed pretty much verbatim (as is their wont); there doesn't seem to be much else about this on the Web. Here's the home page of one of the researchers. The press release gives no hint as to how the UDD was produced. Reader wisebabo asks: "I can easily imagine a material being compressed by some heavy duty diamond anvil to reach this density, the question is: what happens when you let the pressure off? Will it expand (explosively one would presume) back to its original volume?"

Comments

That's "dilithium"

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Woo-hoo, warp drive, here we come!

Oh, only "cold fusion here we come"? Fine, lets just solve our enrgy crisis then. *kicks rock, wishes for holodeck*

Re:That's "dilithium"

[snsh]

Is this Red Matter? Or is the thing you eject into the black hole at the end of the movie to cancel out the Red Matter?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[orkybash]

Can't be Red Matter. I already got a bunch of that all over my floor when I stepped on the pen I use to grade papers with. I'm taking fire safety much more seriously these days though.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[RsG]

Hey, one thing at a time :-)

If we want off earth for any length of time, we need a power plant that will sustain a manned spacecraft for a long journey. Fusion beats the hell out of fission in that department.

So consider this one small step on the way to a future in which star trek looks antiquated. If it works, that is (I have my reservations upon looking at the claims in TFA).

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Jurily]

If we want off earth for any length of time, we need a power plant that will sustain a manned spacecraft for a long journey. Fusion beats the hell out of fission in that department.

Actually, we need waaaaaay more than that. The human body is a lot more sophisticated than scientists would have us believe, and we need an ecosystem big enough to sustain it.

Vitamins don't grow on trees. Nor do micronutrients.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[RsG]

Power is still relevant to that discussion though. Ecosystems require energy input. Anything that might substitute for an ecosystem in this context would require similar energy to work.

If the technology existed to support a human being away from earth for anywhere approaching one human life span, the power requirements would be huge. Fusion, fission, or something on the same order of magnitude is practically a necessity, at least if there's no star in close proximity.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Cold hard reality]

If someone has you believe that the human body is anything less than incredibly sophisticated, they're not a scientist. You're probably thinking of science fiction authors.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[c6gunner]

Vitamins don't grow on trees

Uh. That was a joke, right?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Dishevel]

at least if there's no star in close proximity.

That would still be Fusion. :)

Re:That's "dilithium"

[MadnessASAP]

I've always thought power to be the MOST important aspect of any long term space flight, as long as you have suffficent energy all the other problems pretty much solve themselves so long as you don't lose any mass. Food becomes a non issue so long as you keep tight control of the population and recycle everything (again with the don't lose mass) air scrubbers can break down CO2 back into good clean oxygen (and who wants an inanimate carbon rod for christmas? I sure do.) water can be filtered, Hydrogen can be gathered from the interstellar medium to use as a reactant in engines. You can even use Nuclear Chemistry to produce any elements you might need, not recommended though since it still would be VERY demanding on you energy supply.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[RsG]

Vitamins don't grow on trees

Uh. That was a joke, right?

Nope, he's serious. How many tree-grown products do you eat? I'm betting three or four types of fruit, at most.

Some vitamins do grow on trees, but the rest we need from other sources. Meat isn't easy to get in space, since food animals take up rather a lot of room. And isolated soil culture (what you've got aboard a spacecraft) may not have all the trace elements the plants need to draw upon to sustain us and our would-be food animals.

In a way, for long journeys where there's live and mobile crew to feed, it's almost easier to envision a completely synthetic diet. At least that only requires detailed understanding of our own biochemistry, plus the hypothetical technology to recycle waste indefinitely. Taking all the living things we need to survive with us requires understanding the dynamics of several different biochemistries, and how they all interact, which is no mean feat.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Behrooz]

and if there are clouds, you can be supported by spooky fusion at a distance!

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Jurily]

Uh. That was a joke, right?

Vitamins A,D,E and K only dissolve in fat, and as such, only come from animals.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[c6gunner]

Nope, he's serious. How many tree-grown products do you eat? I'm betting three or four types of fruit, at most.

Well ... in no particular order .... oranges, tangerines, peaches, pears, apples, cherries, plums, avocados, bananas, mangoes, lemons, limes, pineapples, kiwi, and coconuts, to name a few.

I don't like grapefruit or quince but I do eat them sometimes, and I LOVE pomegranate but rarely get the chance to eat it, so it wouldn't be fair to add them to the list. Regardless, that still quadruples your "three-or-four". There's also various forms of nuts (walnuts, chestnuts, almonds, pecans, and pistachios, for me, primarily), plus products such as maple syrup.

So ... if you're right, and he really was being serious ... well, I don't know how to put it any more politely than "he's an idiot".

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Jurily]

So ... if you're right, and he really was being serious ... well, I don't know how to put it any more politely than "he's an idiot".

I'll say it again:

Vitamins A,D,E and K only dissolve in fat, and as such, only come from animals.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[RsG]

You clearly have a more varied diet than most :-)

I was expecting you to name oranges, bananas and apples, tops. That's about as far as fruit gets in most people's diets.

Point still stands though. You've listed plenty of sources of vitamin C. Got anything with A in it?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[hamburger lady]

wha? you produce vitamin D in your skin. you get vitamin A from plant sources, pro vitamines like carotenes. vitamin E is available in avocado and nuts. vitamin K in bananas.

in short, you're waaaay wrong.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

I am guessing it'll take more energy to produce the UDD than it will create in a fusion reaction. The laws of physics will not be mocked...

Re:That's "dilithium"

[rthille]

Pineapple Trees?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[c6gunner]

Vitamins A,D,E and K only dissolve in fat, and as such, only come from animals.

Vitamin A - Apricots.
Vitamin D - UV irradiated mushrooms.
Vitamin E - Nuts, Seeds, Asparagus, lots of others.
Vitamin K - Kiwi, Avocado, Spinach, lots of others.

Plus Vitamin D is naturally synthesized by the human body when exposed to UV radiation.

Even if you were right, though, your original statement would still be stupid. Vitamins clearly DO grow on trees.

If you had stated that SOME vitamins don't grow on trees, I probably wouldn't have bothered responding. I'm not an expert, so I would have assumed that you were probably right. However, after researching your claims about Vitamins A, D, E, and K, it's become apparent that you have no clue what you're talking about.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[c6gunner]

I was expecting you to name oranges, bananas and apples, tops. That's about as far as fruit gets in most people's diets.

I don't know that "most" is accurate, but yeah, people in general probably don't eat enough fruit.

Point still stands though. You've listed plenty of sources of vitamin C. Got anything with A in it?

Apricots.

The original commenter has finally responded, so I'll just point you to my response to him. Apparently there aren't any fruits which contain Vitamin D, but, regardless, his statement was that "vitamins don't grow on trees", not "some vitamins don't grow on trees".

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Jurily]

wha? you produce vitamin D in your skin. you get vitamin A from plant sources, pro vitamines like carotenes. vitamin E is available in avocado and nuts. vitamin K in bananas.

Hmm. My biology teacher has failed me, it seems. My point still stands: if the artificial ecosystem doesn't contain everything the human body needs in the long run, expect failure, and lots of it. There's no point having a fusion reactor in space if everyone basically starves.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[camperdave]

Vitamins A,D,E and K only dissolve in fat, and as such, only come from animals.

Just because a vitamin is capable of dissolving in fat does not mean that it only comes from animal sources. Many plants produce fats (vegetable oils) and are rich in these vitamins. For example, vitamin A is found in carrots and peaches; D is processed from mushrooms; E comes from nuts and leafy veggies, and so does K.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[RsG]

Apparently there aren't any fruits which contain Vitamin D, but, regardless, his statement was that "vitamins don't grow on trees", not "some vitamins don't grow on trees".

When I read the statement, I assumed the fact that some vitamins do grow on trees could be taken for granted, and therefor the only correct way to read it was "not all vitamins needed for human survival grow on trees".

Regardless, I got his point. A spacecraft with a closed soil ecology, isolated from earth, with only plants to feed the crew, would not be viable in the long term. Might not be vitamin deficiency that gets the crew, but something would.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Jurily]

Rule #1 of internet discussions: if you're not sure about something, act like it, and people will research the answer for you.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[goombah99]

Is this Red Matter?

No this is Tenacious-D. And it's Black. Jack Black to be exact. You mine it with the pick of destiny.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed

"This is the sort of English up with which I will not put."

--- attributed to Churchill

Re:That's "dilithium"

[rhathar]

Wow. I'm not sure whether this should be modded '-1 Troll' or '+1 Insightful'

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Ashriel]

Vitamin A:

Carrots, broccoli, sweet potatoes, kale, spinach, pumpkin, cantaloupe, apricots, papaya, mangoes, peas, squash.

Vitamin D:

Generated within the human body on contact with sunlight (UV light). Can also be produced in mushrooms grown under UV light.

Vitamin E:

Avocado, spinach, asparagus, wheat germ, wholegrain foods, most nuts, seeds, and palm & vegetable oils.

Vitamin K:

Spinach, cabbage, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, avocado, kiwi, parsley.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

So we'll also need to invent some kind of fusion-powered bacon tree?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[ppanon]

Plus Vitamin D is naturally synthesized by the human body when exposed to UV radiation.

Sure, and it's very useful in combating a number of illnesses and cancer. Indeed, it's quite likely that the reason why your skin makes Vitamin D given UV exposure is as an immune trigger for a proactive anti-skin cancer response. In which case giving yourself a UV exposure may be a cure that's not much better than the disease. There's also more and more indication that there really is no safe levels of UV skin exposure and that you're better off being pale and taking supplements.

Melanoma really doesn't appeal to me, so I would stick to the shrooms unless you've got nanobots that can take care of the cancer. Of course, if you've got that level of nanotech, you can probably just synthethize the vitamin D.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[fusellovirus]

actually, plants do contain fat soluble vitamins, particularly leafy green ones, hence the reason vegans don't (all) suffer from theses deficiencies

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Annymouse Cowherd]

Plants contain fat-soluble vitamins too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_A#Sources_of_vitamin_A

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Cold-fusion-powered bacon tree sitting next to my monitor ... oh yeah.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Repton]

At the risk of being pedantic, mushrooms aren't plants..

Re:That's "dilithium"

[sreid]

cell culture may make animal free meat some day

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Vitamin D is a hormone produced naturally when human skin is exposed to sunlight. It doesn't fare well when ingested, which is why adding it to milk is basically farcical.
Also you'd get more K out of a stick of broccoli than an entire cow.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[camperdave]

Well, they ain't animals neither.

Yes, fungi aren't plants. However, my point was more "you don't need animals" vs "you can get them all from plants". For example, for vitamin D, all you have to do is get some sunlight.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[ceoyoyo]

Creating fusion explosions in pellets of super compressed deuterium using multiple giant lasers isn't exactly cold fusion.

Hot fusion, yes.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

So...if I'm to write a paper on a goat then I should go on the Internet and act like a goat?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[yndrd1984]

A spacecraft with a closed soil ecology, ... with only plants to feed the crew, would not be viable in the long term. Might not be vitamin deficiency that gets the crew, but something would.

So vegetarians/vegans/fruititarians can't exist in space? What's Earth's special property that allows them to exist here?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[John Meacham]

If we have fusion power to burn, we can have grow lights to grow plants/food. Plants will recycle waste into new vitamins given light as an energy source. It is a big project, but I don't think it is terribly difficult to solve as far as engineering problems go. I mean, your first ventures arn't going to be flung into interstellar space with no contact from earth, they will likely be in earth/moon orbit or the local neighborhood. if it looks like something is running out, get a shipment from earth or chemically synthesize what you need and figure out what caused the shortage in the first place so the next ship doesn't have that issue. It's complicated, but it isn't rocket science. :)

Re:That's "dilithium"

[fireheadca]

You sir, are a genius.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[dgatwood]

If you get enough sunlight (or artificial equivalent), you can produce all the vitamin D you need yourself. So this basically boils down to "energy" again. In fact, AFAIK, you basically can't get enough vitamin D from your diet alone unless the foods or drinks you consume have been artificially enriched (e.g. milk). Even if you could get enough from your diet, you'd probably end up massively overdosing on other vitamins. :-)

Re:That's "dilithium"

[RsG]

Most vegetarians still get animal products via dairy and the like.

Vegans can and do run into nutritional deficiency if they aren't careful. The reason you don't see more of this is that the time it takes for this to be an issue is quite long, and the deficiencies, once they crop up, are very easy to fix. Often they take preventative measures, by way of supplements or specific foods that can cover the lack of animal products. No big deal here on earth.

Earth's "special property" is that we aren't trying to manage the whole ecology. It's taken care of for us.

In space, all other things being equal, those prospects wouldn't exist. Deficiencies, once they crop up, aren't going away. You need to have everything covered in advance. Everything. Right down to the last trace mineral.

Even if you plan for this, and bring a varied food supply, you'll have to ensure things like adequate trace minerals in the plant soil, to ensure those same minerals get into your diet. We aren't even sure we've got these things figured out yet - nobody has gone very long in isolation.

Note that this has little enough to do with whether the astronauts are vegan, vegetarian, omnivorous or what have you. The main reason I use the "plants only" example for a closed ecology not working is because bringing food animals isn't a good idea - no space for them, and you'll need to know their biochemistry as well as ours and the plants to keep everything in check.

If we want to stay in space for longer than a few months at a stretch, we need a detailed knowledge of human biochemistry and nutrition. We'd need to maintain an ecology large enough to provide for it. Ideally, knowing that, we'd want to also have the means to synthesize whatever we can't provide. Trying this back to the original discussion (which was already pretty far offtopic), building a ship or station like this will take a very large power supply.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[w0mprat]

Regardless, I got his point. A spacecraft with a closed soil ecology, isolated from earth, with only plants to feed the crew, would not be viable in the long term.

I guess biosphere 2 proved your point.

But this and many of the posts here are all assuming growing plants in soil.

This is completely ignoring the existence of hydroponics. Not only do you then only need basic chemical nutrients (calcium, phosphorous, sulfates and nitrates etc) to feed plants but you can get about 3 times more rate of growth and massive yield for weight volume and energy expenditure. In terms of spaceflight, hydroponics is the only practicable option. It also has a chance of working in microgravity.

Importantly the mineral solution is fairly basic, it could be produced easily (relatively speaking) from waste raw materials ranging from sewage to waste food to corpses of the deceased even. Also a stop by a comet in the kupier/oort cloud would top things up nicely.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

take enough shrooms and they'll be plants, animals, and a whole lot of things you never thought of before.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to disapoint you, but pineapples grow on the ground, out of a thing that looks like a very stiff grass. Kiwi fruit is a vine fruit, not bad for a spacecraft.

Over to you.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when are mushrooms trees?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[jamesswift]

Pineapples grow on the ground.
http://www.pineapplenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/pineapple-plant-grow-at-home.jpg

Re:That's "dilithium"

[camperdave]

Also you'd get more K out of a stick of broccoli than an entire cow.

Wow! I'm more efficient at extracting vitamin K from broccoli than a cow is? An entire cow! Amazing!

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

I get your point, with one caveat: pineapples don't grow on trees.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course mushrooms aren't trees. By they can *grow* on trees.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[SEWilco]

Vitamins A,D,E and K only dissolve in fat, and as such, only come from animals.

Just eat the rats, then.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[TheLink]

Th other stuff that's important:

1) Shielding aka shelter - but I suppose tons of water could work as shielding against radiation and other crap?
2) The colony being able to self repair and reproduce itself from raw materials (e.g. asteroids).

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Neuticle]

Banana plants are also not trees.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[canonymous]

No, I think that was Yoda.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Also you'd get more K out of a stick of broccoli than an entire cow.

But the cow tastes better!

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Alsee]

>Got anything with A in it?
Apricots.

Oh god, Apricots?
Let me guess...

Vitamin B?
Bananas.

Vitamin C?
Anything Citrus, of course.

As you note you can't get vitamin D from fruit.
For vitamin D you need Dairy.

Vitamin E?
Eubatus, subgenus of Rubus. (Better known as blackberries.)

Vitamin K?
Kale. Vegetable, but that doesn't much matter.

<sing>
A - B - C - D - E - F - G,
H - I - J - K - LMNOP,
Q - R - S, T - U - V,
W, X, Y and Z.
Now I know my Vit-A-Min-s. Next time won't you sing with me?
</sing>

-

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Fizzl]

Vitamins don't grow on trees.

I beg to differ...

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Alsee]

Heay douchebag, you can't get free redhead porn on the internet.

-

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

pineapples dont grow on trees, lol

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Fizzl]

Apparently there aren't any fruits which contain Vitamin D

Your skin creates vitamin D in sunlight. Just open the blinders or use artificial light which resembles earths suns spectra.

I learned this when we had our child. You need to feed infants vitamin D supplements because their skin does not yet create it, or the skin is not tough enough to handle enough sunlight, or its just too fucking dark here in Finland most of the year... Or something or another... :)

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Jedi Alec]

So vegetarians/vegans/fruititarians can't exist in space? What's Earth's special property that allows them to exist here?

Spiders crawl into their mouths while they sleep. No spiders on the spaceship...the vegans die. Save the spiders!

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Lars T.]

Also you'd get more K out of a stick of broccoli than an entire cow.

But the cow tastes better!

The entire cow?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Phoghat]

Come on, every body knows that's Dilithium crystals.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Phoghat]

What you are saying, is give peas a chance.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[c6gunner]

Are you ok?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[c6gunner]

Well thanks for the correction. Out of a list of 16-ish plants, I had to get at least one wrong!

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Hucko]

Health Welfare.

Come on. Admit it, it was funny.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[GNious]

eeewwww

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Zashi]

[pedantic] Bananas don't grow on trees. [/pedantic]

Re:That's "dilithium"

[DrWho520]

And why, may I ask, does fusion beat "the hell out of fission" in the department of long journey manned space flight? Neither provides thrust, just energy to run a thrust producing engine, e.g. an ion drive. Both power sources would very heavy, because of shielding in the fission case and magnetic containment field generators in the fusion case. If you want a long lasting, nuclear reaction power source, an existing, mature solution exists.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Prof.Phreak]

*kicks rock, wishes for holodeck*

...unless you're already in one.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Gandalf_Greyhame]

Also you'd get more K out of a stick of broccoli than an entire cow.

But the cow tastes better!

The entire cow?

On average - YES

Re:That's "dilithium"

[stjobe]

Hrm... I dose myself with UV-B twice weekly to treat a skin disorder. This is, of course, done under medical supervision, which I would wager the UV exposure in order to generate vitamin D for a spaceship/spacestation crew would also have to be.

As for safe levels of UV skin exposure, the problem as I understand it is more from natural sunlight with its UV-B component than from tanning salons with its pure UV-A light. I don't know whether it is UV-A or UV-B that triggers the vitamin D creation in the skin, but that should be easy enough to research.

Oh, and you don't get a tan from UV-B, so over-exposure to that will have you ending up pale with melanoma - the best of both worlds! :)

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Gandalf_Greyhame]

Bananas are also not fruit - I mean, if we are going to be pedantic

Re:That's "dilithium"

[AP31R0N]

Maybe he meant "vitamins" as the pills people take.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well ... in no particular order .... oranges, tangerines, peaches, pears, apples, cherries, plums, avocados, bananas, mangoes, lemons, limes, pineapples, kiwi, and coconuts, to name a few.I don't like grapefruit or quince but I do eat them sometimes, and I LOVE pomegranate but rarely get the chance to eat it, so it wouldn't be fair to add them to the list. Regardless, that still quadruples your "three-or-four". There's also various forms of nuts (walnuts, chestnuts, almonds, pecans, and pistachios, for me, primarily), plus products such as maple syrup.

And don't forget the mangoes in syrup...

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

redheadfap.com ?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Muad'Dave]

Isn't that "What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Muad'Dave]

I think he had an ischemic event - perhaps a stroke.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Abstrackt]

Looks like it was modded both.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Phoghat]

Are you intimating that your mother isn't a woman? The jocularity here is that there are many RPG players sitting in their basements, laying waste to imagined enemies, while their mothers wail and gnash their teeth because their progeny are not gainfully employed at some adult endeavor. Do you get it now?

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Bob-taro]

You clearly have a more varied diet than most :-)

Most slashdotters, maybe. We don't all live off Cheese Poofs and Mountain Dew. Look at the produce section of the grocery store - they don't stock that stuff just to let it rot (like I do when I buy vegetables).

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Muad'Dave]

Ah. The lamer-gamer in the basement. I get it. How about this?

What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of your mother calling you for dinner.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.redheadmania.com/

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Pineapples don't grow on trees...

Re:That's "dilithium"

[wealthychef]

Sorry to piggyback on your irrelevant posts. Some people might be interested in the drawbacks of the technology. I looked and this was all I could find:

.

There are just a slew of "buts" coming. First off is as Holmlid notes, just making the deuterium so dense in any volume is an issue and must be worked quite cold. Next, the matter of stability comes to mind, as in the paper’s graphs the time to live is short, shorter than even nanoseconds. That makes the foreseeable production essentially within a laser fusion reactor. Making the ultra dense deuterium and moving it seems out of the question for now. The time of life seems impractical for any laser ignition anytime soon. Finally, the fusion reaction would have to be rather, well, counter intuitive, yielding harmless helium and hydrogen. One would expect a wider range of new materials from the fusion including tritium, which can be nasty radioactive stuff. Lots of supposition, but experimentation is in order.

All that said, it is by every objective view - a great success. Metallic hydrogen has been worked on for several years with less than useful results. The heavier ultra dense deuterium with the atoms already very close might just spark some engineering to see if the new fuel candidate has potential. But it’s a long climb up a tall mountain.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Phoghat]

Tried that but it has too many characters in the sig.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[TinBromide]

Also you'd get more K out of a stick of broccoli than an entire cow.

But the cow tastes better!

The entire cow?

Well, just the tongue, since that's where the taste buds are.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[cylcyl]

I think that the poster meant that vitamin PILLs don't grow on tree, which is technically correct. Ironically it misses that tree born fruits/fungi provide vitamins

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anenome]

"Some vitamins do grow on trees, but the rest we need from other sources. Meat isn't easy to get in space, since food animals take up rather a lot of room. And isolated soil culture (what you've got aboard a spacecraft) may not have all the trace elements the plants need to draw upon to sustain us and our would-be food animals. In a way, for long journeys where there's live and mobile crew to feed..."

- You guys don't get it. We're never going to explore the universe as flesh-beings. We weren't made for space. Go watch 2001 again, the Star Child must make its appearance. And it will be the Technological Singularity. It's not Man in the flesh who will explore the cosmos, nor his machines, but the Man in the machine who will do it. By taking on a new form, as a machine, when Man merges with and becomes his Tools, we put on a body made for space-travel: one that requires no food, no sustenance apart from pure energy. No silly vitamins and theories of how to grow shit. No worries about how to put yourself into suspended-animation for the trip, no you just power off for awhile, and no worries about dying, since you can be easily 'reborn' from backup data. The only thing that could possibly allow man in the flesh to travel so far would be faster than light travel, but that may end up being impossible after all. I'm more interested in finding entry into the 4th dimension than faster than light travel-- although they may prove to be the exact same thing in the end.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[ppanon]

Well, if you have a skin disorder, you probably don't have much choice. I seem to remember hearing that recent research indicated that there was really no safe levels of either UVA or UVB and that even the more benign and less energetic band still increases your chances of skin cancer significantly. Can't find a reference though.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[ppanon]

Ah, found a reference to the report I was thinking of.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[lewiscr]

Just make Soyleen Green. It contains 100% of a human's dietary requirements.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm you may not want to include pineapple on your list. I think they grow in the ground.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[stjobe]

Conclusions from the research papers (emphasis mine):
Are tanning beds "safe"? Human studies of melanoma:

Although the data appear to indicate a clear relationship between sunbed use and the development of melanoma, these data could be confounded by the lack of accurate measurement of timing and dose of sunbed exposures and lack of thorough control for concurrent sun exposure and host factors such as phenotype and genetic susceptibility. Until these factors are better characterized, we must exercise caution in evaluating the extent of the risk for cutaneous melanoma posed by sunbeds. Nonetheless, because of this very uncertainty, the data do not support a claim that sunbeds are safe, and such claims should be considered misleading.

In conclusion, it is clear that both UVA and UVB are mutagenic for skin, and for melanocytes in particular. UVA is much less mutagenic in unpigmented cells, but UVA flux to the basal epidermis from sunlight is typically around 50-100-fold higher than UVB flux. Moreover there is evidence that melanin and especially pheomelanin can photosensitize cells to UVA mutagenicity. UVA can initiate melanomas in fish and melanocytic hyperplasia in pigmented opossums, while UVB can induce melanoma in susceptible mice and UVA has generally not been tested. Pending better experimental data on whether UVA can indeed cause melanoma in mammals, and given that it is mutagenic and cell mutations can cause cancer, much stronger steps should be taken internationally to warn users of sunbeds â" even those emitting UVA only â" that this activity may be hazardous, such as mandatory warning notices. An example of such a notice has been made available in the UK (Health and Safety Executive 1995), also at http://www.hse.gov.uk/radiation/nonionising/sunbeds.htm. Specifically use by those under 18 should be banned, and publicity claiming that UVA sunbeds are safe should not be permitted.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[stjobe]

Bah, missed the second link:
Ultraviolet wavebands and melanoma initiation

Not really any strong conclusions in there.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the conclusion is that the assumption that's been made for years that UVB is solely responsible for melanoma is based on flawed reasoning and not any actual testing. It's basically arguing that some long term studies are necessary. I don't know that it will ever be possible to perform a controlled human experiment (except maybe with day-shift miners who would be subject to other carcinogens) but you would think some animal model studies would be the next step. It's a fairly recent report though so we probably won't see results from animal testing for a couple of years.

Personally, I would err on the safe side in the meantime. However I tend to be cautious and I don't have a skin condition that needs treatment with UV.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well ... in no particular order .... oranges, tangerines, peaches, pears, apples, cherries, plums, avocados, bananas, mangoes, lemons, limes, pineapples, kiwi, and coconuts, to name a few.

Birds do not grow on trees. This particular kind of bird doesn't even build nests in trees.

Re:That's "dilithium"

[yndrd1984]

In space, all other things being equal, those prospects wouldn't exist. Deficiencies, once they crop up, aren't going away. You need to have everything covered in advance. Everything. Right down to the last trace mineral.

Good point, but I'm not sure what that has to do with "A spacecraft with a closed soil ecology, isolated from earth, with only plants to feed the crew, would not be viable in the long term".

Earth's "special property" is that we aren't trying to manage the whole ecology. It's taken care of for us.

Again, I agree with your statements, but I don't know how "non-terrestrial agriculture will require more planning and management that the terrestrial variety" implies that "meat is needed".

Re:That's "dilithium"

[chris.evans]

be very careful of wht you invent... Tri-quadrocarbon-heavy duetrium quantriullium liquid nitrogen oxide. do not build a bomb please. even a sub light engine scares me. Bulvanian/alien technology. we are watching.... moo.

Hmm

[poetmatt]

Sounds like the university of gothenberg should just go walk nibbler.

Re:Hmm

[pilgrim23]

well that went up like a heavy deuterium balloon

Re:Hmm

[Yvan256]

Or at least, invent Diamondium.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

DIAMONDILLIUM!

Re:Hmm

[mundanetechnomancer]

you fool, obviously diamondillium would be a better choice

Re:Hmm

[serutan]

That was my exact thought. I love it when they pick up the Dark Matter with one hand in a plastic bag and toss it in the engine.

Details missing ... for now

[PhxBlue]

The press release gives no hint as to how the UDD was produced.

Of course not -- they'll want to patent that method before they release the details. And why not? If it turns out to be exactly what we needed all along to make fusion commercially viable, they'll be set for life.

Re:Details missing ... for now

[Red Flayer]

And why not? If it turns out to be exactly what we needed all along to make fusion commercially viable, they'll be set for life.

s/life/end of time for them and all their descendants

Re:Details missing ... for now

[Anonymous Coward]

Which will be about 2.5 hours after they figure out how to weaponize it.

Re:Details missing ... for now

[PhxBlue]

s/life/end of time for them and all their descendants

Patent != copyright. Reading comprehension fail.

Re:Details missing ... for now

[Red Flayer]

Right back at you. The value of it would be astronomical, it doesn't matter if they can only make money off it for 17-18 years or life +80 years.

It's not aout how long they'd have IP rights, it;s about how much they could sell it for.

No problem.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Twas asked:

"I can easily imagine a material being compressed by some heavy duty diamond anvil to reach this density, the question is: what happens when you let the pressure off? Will it expand (explosively one would presume) back to its original volume?"

Simple answer, known by all: Duct Tape.

RS

Re:No problem.

[iamkion132]

I can see someone trying this and more then likely succeeding.

Re:No problem.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

of course. duct tape fixes everything!

Re:No problem.

[v1]

Depends on if there's an atomic or state change.

For example, if you compress CO2 (and chill it) it turns to a solid and doesn't simply explode if let out of its container. It has to thaw to change state.

Matter crushed in a pulsar etc is commonly described where a teaspoon of the stuff would weigh as much as a dumptruckload of granite. That doesn't explode either, it's just been crushed on a nuclear level. (electron shells collapsed)

But it's common for reactions to work better under pressure. So even if the stuff was prone to expansion, you'd probably want to keep it compressed once you got it that way.

Re:No problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, duct tape may be fine. If the deuterium is inside an anvil press.. bolt the pieces together, wrap it in duct tape, and toss the whole thing into your fusion chamber. If the iron plasma doesn't interfere with the fusion reaction and you get enough power out of it, keep making steel and diamonds as part of your fuel cycle.

Dude... That's heavy!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude... That's heavy!!!

Re:Dude... That's heavy!!!

[Yvan256]

Coming in 2010: "Dude, where's my ultra-dense deuterium?", staring Ashton Kutcher.

Re:Dude... That's heavy!!!

[khellendros1984]

Why are things so heavy? Is there a problem with the earth's gravitational pull?

What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Anonymous Coward]

"Highly Radioactive Tritium" - I'm assuming they meant something concerning the very energetic neutrons produced in D-T fusion. Tritium by itself can't be considered highly radioactive by any stretch of the imagination. They put the stuff in my watch with thin glass for a shield, for Pete's sake!

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[RsG]

Thin glass is all you need. Tritium is a beta emitter - skin won't necessarily stop it, but just about anything else will. If it leaks out, it'll be as a diffuse gas that will react with oxygen to produce slightly radioactive water - with the quantities in your watch, that's no big deal. It is still somewhat energetic though (probably where they're getting "highly radioactive").

I can see why the method from TFA, if it works, might not be wise to use on tritium. An ultradense block of material that, upon returning to regular atmospheric pressure, expands into a radioactive gas... not a great idea. Tritium, like human beings, is only mostly harmless :-)

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[The Mysterious Dr. X]

No? It's the least stable isotope of hydrogen, and in common usage, least stable = most radioactive. If you only consider beta emissions, then no, it's not terribly strong or dangerous; in the case of glow-in-the-dark watches, it's certainly much safer than radium. Still, relative to deuterium, it's much more radioactive.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Goaway]

Actually, skin will likely stop the betas from tritium just fine. It's not just that it's a beta emitter, it's that it emits betas at 17 keV.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[RsG]

Still, relative to deuterium, it's much more radioactive.

Deuterium doesn't decay, at least not on any observable time scale. So "relative to deuterium", anything that does decay is much more radioactive. This includes such notable elements as Bismuth, used in Pepto-Bismol, and Tungsten, used in lightbulb filaments. Nevermind such notables as Americium in smoke detectors.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[methano]

Tritium has a relatively short half-life (around 12.3 yr) so it spews out a lot of low energy beta particles relative to, say, carbon-14 which spews out fewer, hotter beta particles. If you're counting, it's pretty radioactive. I do know that tritiated organic molecules will turn brown on standing pretty quickly. Much faster than carbon-14 labeled molecules.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was earth that was mostly harmless. Humans seem pretty harmful to me.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[RsG]

It's the entry on earth under the HHGTG that lists it as "mostly harmless". I've always taken that to mean the population, not the planet itself. YMMV.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Anonymous Coward]

I would reserve the phrase "highly radioactive" for something like Cesium-137. Or do you want the upper scale for this discussion to be "super-mega-ultra radioactive".

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Dragonslicer]

No? It's the least stable isotope of hydrogen

It's the only known isotope of hydrogen that isn't stable.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Dragonslicer]

This includes such notable elements as Bismuth, used in Pepto-Bismol, and Tungsten, used in lightbulb filaments.

I had missed the memo that bismuth-209 decays very slowly (half life of approximately ~10^19 years, which is stable for all practical purposes). Most naturally occurring tungsten is stable, though, at least as far as human observation goes (Wikipedia says that about 0.1% of natural tungsten is tungsten-180, which has a half-life of ~10^18 years, which is as practically stable as bismuth-209).

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Jerrry]

Actually, the betas only have a kinetic energy of around 5.7 keV. The rest is carried away by an electron antineutrino.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[RsG]

The point was that the phrase "less stable than deuterium" described every single element that undergoes decay in the known universe. Kinda like saying something is less dense than a singularity ;-)

I was not being particularly serious. What I said is true though - there's a lot of stuff that undergoes radioactive decay that we take for granted.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Dragonslicer]

Don't worry, I made my own snarky comment. The almost-layman's physics books I have are fairly old now, so I didn't even know that anyone had detected alpha radiation from bismuth-209. The Wikipedia article just mentions that the common isotopes of tungsten might undergo alpha decay very slowly, but it hasn't been definitely observed. Of course, protons themselves are theoretically unstable, but the half life is long enough that we don't have to care.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[The Mysterious Dr. X]

My point is that tritium is not stable. As everyone here has so astutely pointed out, deuterium is stable. We are all in agreement.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[RudeIota]

Deuterium doesn't decay, at least not on any observable time scale. So "relative to deuterium", anything that does decay is much more radioactive. This includes such notable elements as Bismuth, used in Pepto-Bismol, and Tungsten, used in lightbulb filaments. Nevermind such notables as Americium in smoke detectors.

At the time of this post, the parent is rated 4, funny.

It was a pretty serious post, so I ask, was this modded funny because Pepto-Bismol is hilariously pink?

Or.. maybe it was a vaguely loose connection to the zany irony of Americium (which sounds nothing like America) being used in smoke detectors, being that the U.S. is the 4 largest tobacco producer?

Hey, perhaps it was even the bumper crop of laughs that using "Tungsten" provides since it shares the same name as a Palm PDA device? Was it really that side splitting? I just don't get it. :\

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Down_in_the_Park]

Yes, very radioactive, but as said before it's a beta emitter and a low energy beta emitter. So to make it clear to all those who believe "radioactive = mean, dangerous, deadly", it doesn't have the energy to ionize anything further than a micrometer away (in water) and could therefore considered harmless to human.

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[The Mysterious Dr. X]

Yes! Exactly! Someone understands my point and isn't obsessed with the concept of relative stability. Rock on!

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Goaway]

Uh-oh! That antineutrino won't get stopped by your skin, though!

Re:What the heck passes for editing these days???

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't somebody please think of the Americium?

It's also good for practical jokes

[master_p]

Imaging putting a little bit of that in ones shoe...a great laugh!

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it would probably be funnier to put it someone elses shoes.

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[supernova_hq]

I'd rather drop a piece from the top of the Eiffel tower and see how big of a hole it makes!

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[dontmakemethink]

But think how much heavier the Earth will be when they start making lots of this stuff. Won't that affect our solar orbit? Or the tide?

It's like how sponges can hold 25 times their weight in water. Imagine how high the water levels would be if they became extinct!

I don't know how people can sleep...

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[Cold hard reality]

Hopefully not a black one.

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

It burns! It burns! I think (hope, pray, beg) it's sarcasm but I can easily imagine someone being so stupid to actually write this!

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[CopaceticOpus]

Interesting idea. I found this terminal velocity calculator.

A 1 cm^3 cube of UDD has a surface area of 0.00107639104 sq feet. (Actually, it would be a little more as it rotates in the air.) Unfortunately, the above calculator rounds values off too much to handle this. In fact, it can't really handle it because it isn't able to compensate for compressibility effects and shock waves as we exceed the speed of sound. (Using the Eiffel Tower's height of 1063 ft., it is returning a value of a little over a mile per second!)

So let's try dropping a big piece, say a sphere with a cross sectional area of 1 sq. ft. This will have a radius of sqrt(1 / pi), and hence a volume of (4/3) * pi * (sqrt( 1 / pi))^3, or about 0.75225 cubic feet. This yields an impressive weight of 6,113,486 pounds.

The terminal velocity calculator is cutting us off at 10,000 pounds, but we can punch this out ourselves to get an answer. We just need a reasonable value for the atmospheric density. Through a little trial and error, I found that a value of .001697 gives about the same results as what the terminal velocity calculator returns for 10,000 pound weights. Running the calculation for our weight yields 101,000 ft/sec., or about 19.2 miles/second.

This is surely a ridiculous result, since we're still disregarding compressibility effects, and using dodgy math. Still, it was interesting, and this sort of speed is not impossible. The fastest man made space probe, Helios, traveled at over twice this speed, albeit in a vacuum.

Let's accept the result for now, and compare this to the Chicxulub impact, which is "one of the largest confirmed impact structures in the world; the impacting bolide that formed the crater was at least 10 km (6 mi) in diameter." I don't see any estimates of the bolide's mass or impact velocity. However, we know the impact released 400 zettajoules of energy, or 4x10^23 joules.

Our object would have a kinetic energy of merely 1.3x10^15 joules, so it probably won't be destroying the earth. Still, with the force all directed at such a tiny area, something dramatic is bound to happen. I imagine it would burrow quite deeply, and then release energy upward and outward somehow.

I have no idea how to estimate the hole's depth. If anyone thinks this ludicrous math is enjoyable, feel free to add your own calculations!

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

Pounds? As a way of comparing people fat enough to need to be fork lifted out of their trailers it's fine. Try the metric system!

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[JDevers]

The good thing is there is absolutely no reason at all to have a sphere of it that size ever made. It would be worthless for energy production at that size because the start of a reaction for that much deuterium would quickly go catastrophically bad. If you think that 6 million pounds of something falling at a fast rate (note...not an INSANELY fast rate, just very very fast) would be bad, think about 6 million pounds of deuterium going critical.

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[AslanTheMentat]

But think how much heavier the Earth will be when they start making lots of this stuff. Won't that affect our solar orbit? Or the tide?

It's like how sponges can hold 25 times their weight in water. Imagine how high the water levels would be if they became extinct!

I don't know how people can sleep...

...man... that whole post was completely Dr. Steve Brule. For your health!

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it would affect the earth's mass if it's made of materials on the earth. If we were to start mass-producing this stuff in space and then bringing it to earth, maybe.

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, how would this increase the earth's mass? are they getting the UDD from space or soemthing?

silly as people who say that melting the north pole will raise ocean levels. it displaces the same mass as if it were liquid.

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[j-stroy]

So we should build it at the top of a hill to maximize the potential energy?

Or manufacture using solar electricity it in geo-stationary orbit and sell it as counterweights for a space elevator which transmits energy mechanically to the surface of the earth?

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

Where would you keep it?

If a perfect 1cm^3 cube weighs 130 kg, then the pressure on the object immediately under it due to gravity would be 130kg/cm2, or roughly 1850psi. Wouldnâ(TM)t that punch a hole through most things?

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[Hinhule]

Women walk around in high heels causing that kind of pressure all over the place...

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[dontmakemethink]

dude, how would this increase the earth's mass? are they getting the UDD from space or soemthing?

silly as people who say that melting the north pole will raise ocean levels. it displaces the same mass as if it were liquid.

ICE DENSITY FAIL

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[spirito]

That's why it is always better to do calculations by hand. Considering the big mass of the object you can discard drag effects. This leaves you with a uniform acceleration situation. Consideing a=9.81 m/s^2 and an height of 324 meters, this gives an impact speed of 80 m/s = 288 Km/h. This is obviously independent of the mass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_mass#Equivalence_of_inertial_and_gravitational_masses) of the object since we discard drag.

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[sanosuke001]

Speaking of ludicrous math...

I was at work talking with a co-worker and I was talking about Portal and how you can fall through one portal, come out the other just above the first, and then fall through again. Now, if this were possible, you could get something going very fast. Then I remembered Terminal Velocity and just said we'd put it in a vacuum first.

So, I did some calculations. After 30 years, it would be traveling a bit over 30x the speed of light if I remember correctly. I know that shouldn't be possible and Portal is definitely impossible (as of now) but if it were, I wonder what would hold back my mass from passing the speed of light. It was an interesting thought, anyway....


I know, off topic but.... aww man

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[georgeb]

You're joking, right?

Your terminal velocity calculator doesn't account for relativistic effects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy#Relativistic_kinetic_energy_of_rigid_bodies

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[paulkoan]

What is this feet and pounds crap? Are you working this out on a cave wall somewhere?

Please come outside.

Re:It's also good for practical jokes

[flink]

I think you're getting a little carried away there. Even in a vacuum, an object at rest dropped from 324m (1063ft.) on earth will impact at 80m/s (~180mph).

Remember, if you neglect drag, you can just use simple linear acceleration, which ignores mass anyway:

dx = 1/2at^2
324m = 1/2 * 9.8m/s^2 * t^2
66.12s^2 = t^2
t = 8.13s
 
V = dx/dt = at
V = 9.8m/s^s * 8.13s
V = ~80m/s
 
KE(small sphere) = 4.128e+5 joules
KE(large sphere) = 8.805e+9 joules
KE(sedan @ 40mph)= 4.636e+5 joules

So your 1cm^2 sample will impact with approximately the energy than a typical sedan traveling at 40mph. And, of course, chucking 6 million pounds of anything off the Eiffel Tower will cause a big crash. However, it will hardly be earth shattering (picture a building collapsing).

In the real world, the object will be subject to atmospheric drag and can only impact slower.

Another sanity check you could perform would be to calculate the potential energy of the object at the top of the tower, which can only be greater than the kinetic energy at impact due to losses from friction.

PE(small sphere) = 130kg * 9.8m/s^2 * 324m = 4.128e+5 joules

Also:

KE(bottom) < PE(top)
1/2mv^2 < mgh
v < (2gh)^1/2
v < (2 * 9.8m/s^2 * 324m)^1/2
v < ~80m/s

LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Smidge207]

FIRST - there is no claim for an observable amount of matter in the D(-1) state. It isn't "microscopic amounts" - for "microscopic" means "visible in a microscope". Do the math, fellow NBF visionaries: 2.3 picometers ... if it were a lattice compound ... would be about 440^3 units per cubic nanometer, or 440,000^3 (about 85E15 or 85 quadrillion atoms in a cubic micrometer box. Nothing doing. They're measuring the energy (~600eV) spectroscopically, from the FRAGMENTS of the supposed union. This is not a union-of-deuterons lasting nanoseconds, or microseconds, or milliseconds, or seconds. No, these are the fragments that lasted just long enough for the D(-1) state to hold together in a laser beam for ATTOSECONDS. (That's what those little "as" annotations are on their viewgraph).

SECOND, while it is nice to foster the conjecture that such matter IF microscopically attainable, IF stable enought to survives the time-of-flight from source to fusion reactor, IF the energy-cost-of-production is far less than the increased odds (and useful energy return) of the attendant fusion exists ... THEN it is a great and wonderful thing.

THIRD, single D(-1) pseudonucleons may well exist for nanoseconds per KURT9's thesis, but again ... nanoseconds is very much too short for deeply sub-relativistic ballistic particles to traverse a source (the laser-and-"compression" chamber) to the fusion reaction chamber. Even if they only exist as single diatomic particles, lifetimes have to be raised at least into the microseconds. For practical energy production in the reactor proper (let's say, 250 MW thermal), 4.88E20 diatomic Rydberg nucleons would have to be created (assuming 3.23MeV per fusion of D(-1) to get to 4He) ... and remembering that 4He is the least likely product produced.

FOURTH (per last part of Third), the 2D + 2D = 4He reaction is well known to be very improbable in a single step, since there are LOWER ENERGY intermediate products that bleed off the excited spin-state fusion reaction (one of the key 'first principles' of fusion physics). Per the excellent if brief article in WikiPedia,

50% ... D + D = T + p
50% ... D + D = 3He + n

Researching further, D + D = 4He occurs about one in a dozen million fusion reactions nominally.

FIFTH, summing goatse.cx guy's "facts" together and this looks like yet another fruitless (for fusion) avenues of research. There is only hope, and not a shred of evidence that the D(-1) Rydberg CAN be made in 1E20 nucleons/second quantities, no reference to the overall energy-of-formation, no evidence that the diatoms can exist for more than attoseconds, nothing but speculative wishes that such a material holds promise to D+D=4He reactions (which is just an uber-popular topic, anyway). Therefore, it gets a 3 star SnakeOil award, coupled with 2 stars for the actual science, the novelty of the discovery, and the fine department of Physics at Gothenberg for letting these two obviously talented, and quite frankly queer, researchers have their limelight.

So, in summary, I have to say: "Sorry, dude, I just don't think it'll work."

=smudge=

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, go easy on the periods.

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[John Hasler]

There need be no "time of flight" if the state can be achieved in situ in a target immediately before it is struck by the compressing laser pulses. Thus you might hit a structured target with a pulse designed to create some D(-1) followed immediately by a compression and detonation pulse (or even structure the compression pulse to create some D(-1). You also need not rely on a D-D reaction: driving tritium nuclei into a core of D(-1) should enhance yield.

It's worth investigating.

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Red Flayer]

OK, I don't know much about fission (just the nerd basics), and I'll trust (to a certain extent) that you know what you're talking about, and that the potential impact of this research as claimed i the press release, etc, is a crock of shit... but:

and the fine department of Physics at Gothenberg for letting these two obviously talented, and quite frankly queer, researchers have their limelight.

Seriously? WTF does their sexuality have to do with this? At all?

I've now disregarded everything you've written based upon that one comment.

Or, if I'm way off base here... nice troll. 9/10: you lost a point because I have this nagging suspicion that your post truly is a troll. If it wasn't a troll, kindly disregard this paragraph and what I have written above still stands.

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen that much smack laid down since Mr. T was on the A-Team!

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Chrutil]

So, in summary, I have to say: "Sorry, dude, I just don't think it'll work."

Hang on.. your post was too long - were you replying to the guy who suggested duct tape?

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, these are the fragments that lasted just long enough for the D(-1) state to hold together in a laser beam for ATTOSECONDS.

So how many attoseconds does it need to be held together for a fusion reaction?

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Volante3192]

Queer has more definitions than gay.

Peculiar, eccentric, those are more probable. Fake is also a valid definition but that probably doesn't apply. (Queer fiver as opposed to a queer scientist)

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[thedonger]

FIRST - ... [science omitted]

Hey! Enough with the science stuff. Frame your argument within a Star Trek or cartoon reference only, please.

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about a quantum leap from 'queer' to 'homosexual'.

I've now disregarded everything you've written based upon that one English word. Obviously we aren't speaking the same language so grffle pz n wuuuuuuuuu

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[soniCron88]

I don't know what the fuck you just said, but it sounds good to me.

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

THIRD, single D(-1) pseudonucleons may well exist for nanoseconds per KURT9's thesis...

KURT9 is a relative of K-REN3 and MMD3?

http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/2001-09-11/index.html

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to get you a girl, mate...

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah hah - "queer" doesn't necessarily mean "gay", just as "odd" doesn't necessarily mean "not even".

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, these are the fragments that lasted just long enough for the D(-1) state to hold together in a laser beam for ATTOSECONDS. (That's what those little "as" annotations are on their viewgraph).

You didn't specify what viewgraph you were referring to (there are none in the links in the summary). Presumably you are looking at one of their papers. E.g. Figure 2 from:
S. Badiei, P. U. Andersson and L. Holmlid, "High-energy Coulomb explosions in ultra-dense deuterium: time-of-flight mass spectrometry with variable energy and flight length". Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 282 (2009) 70-76. doi:10.1016/j.ijms.2009.02.014

Yes, that graph marks points along the curve with "as" meaning "attoseconds", but that doesn't mean that the UDD has a lifetime of attoseconds. That graph is describing the "Coulomb explosion" technique they are using to measure the bond distances in UDD. Briefly, they excite the ultra-dense deuterium with a laser pulse that ionizes some of the atoms, which causes them to fly apart (due to Coulomb repulsion) with great energy. By measuring the ions that result from this explosion they can calculate the bond distances. This high-speed explosion, however, was artificially induced to make it possible to measure the inter-atomic distances. If they had not purposefully excited the UDD with a laser it would have lasted longer.

I'm not sure how much longer that would be, mind you. As far as I can tell from their papers, they have not yet measured the lifetime. So it may very well be a rather low lifetime. (Though some forms of Rydberg matter can have appreciable lifetimes.) If anyone has any actual data (with link) for the lifetime, I'd love to see it.

IF stable enought to survives the time-of-flight from source to fusion reactor

For Intertially-Confined Fusion, which typically uses lasers to compress the target matter, one could design a system where the UDD state is produced in-situ and immediately laser-compressed.

single D(-1) pseudonucleons may well exist for nanoseconds per KURT9's thesis

This is another statement whose source is unclear. Who or what is "KURT9"?

There is only hope ... nothing but speculative wishes that such a material holds promise to D+D=4He reactions ...

From the above-cited paper:
"Due to the high density of the D(1) material, a factor of 2×10^5 higher than for H(1), the transport of energetic particles through the material is strongly impeded. In fact, the deuterons at 2.3pm bond distance are close to the nuclear barrier, and a kinetic energy of 630 eV may be sufficient to give d-d fusion by tunneling."

I haven't looked into the theory enough yet to say whether their suggestion of tunneling is correct or not... but if true this would indeed vastly increase the rate of fusion reactions. If nothing else, the extremely high density of the nucleons will make all kinds of many-body and multi-step reactions much more viable.

he fine department of Physics at Gothenberg for letting these two obviously talented, and quite frankly queer, researchers have their limelight.

Umm... what?

=smudge=

I guess you're trolling.

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude - you generated your response with SCIgen, right?

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Threni]

"Trolls they were,..."

Ironic, unless you are genuinely ignorant of the meaning of the words you're so quick to be offended by...

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong about the rydberg matter only lasting for attoseconds.

The laser beam is not shone directly on the rydberg matter emitter. It is a few millimeters away. If it decayed on an attosecond timescale then all of the matter would be gone in the time it takes it to diffuse a millimeter.

Re:LOTS of missing details from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're at it, gay also has more definitions.

What?

[DallasMay]

"A cubic centimeter of the stuff would weigh 287 lbs. (130 kg)." Deuterium is just a Proton and a Neutron. Wouldn't it weigh the same thing as a helium atom?

Re:What?

[wjousts]

We're talking about density here. Besides a single atom of helium weighs more (than a single atom of D). It has two protons and two neutrons.

Re:What?

[NoStarchPlox]

Did you miss the part of the title that said "ultra-dense"? As in they packed more atoms of it into the cubic centimeter than you would see in a normal amount of it.

yum

[ilblissli]

porkchop sandwiches!

how does this not spontaneously fuse

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Out of curiosity I looked up the density at the center of the sun and got an answer of "150,000 kg/m3 (150 times the density of water on Earth)" which to me is less than "100,000 times more dense than water" So my question then became how does this not spontaneously fuse?

Re:how does this not spontaneously fuse

[jbeaupre]

The sun is much hotter. Fusion is a product of temperature and density.

Re:how does this not spontaneously fuse

[RsG]

The centre of the sun is less dense than you might think, owing to thermal and radiation pressure.

The energy from the aforementioned fusion counteracts the pressure from the outer layers pushing in. This state is one of equilibrium; reduce the rate of reaction and the core contracts, speeding fusion, increase the rate of reaction and the core expands, slowing the fusion back down again. The estimated density of the sun is much, much lower than the density would be for a non-fusing body of the same mass. If anything, this discrepancy will be more noticeable in the core, where the temperature is highest.

If no fusion reactions were occurring, which is what will happen when the fuel runs out, the core would contract until it became electron-degenerate matter, the material of a white dwarf star. With a more massive star, the contraction would continue past that point until neutron degeneracy took over (leading to a neutron star), or it passed the Swartzchild radius (leading to a black hole).

Re:how does this not spontaneously fuse

[FudRucker]

dont forget mass, the sun is pretty damn big too compared to earth standards

Re:how does this not spontaneously fuse

[radtea]

So my question then became how does this not spontaneously fuse?

It would... given enough time. The rate of fusion in the solar core is quite sedate. The vast majority of hydrogen or deuterium in the solar core won't fuse for some billions of years to come.

This stuff will have a huge spontaneous fusion cross-section, relatively speaking, but that could still be vastly lower than anything practically interesting. During the cold fusion flap Koonin and collaborators did a careful recalculation of the "standard" spontaneous fusion cross-section (which depends sensitively on the details of the asymptotic wavefunction) and found that the accepted value was many orders of magnitude too small. But the corrected value was still many orders of magnitude smaller than that required to make any of the cold fusion claims plausible.

Re:how does this not spontaneously fuse

[Anonymous Coward]

The average density of the sun is that of water.

Re:how does this not spontaneously fuse

[T Murphy]

Fusion is a product of temperature and density.

That should mean we would get fusion if we turn up the thermostat at the Capitol building.

Re:how does this not spontaneously fuse

[joe_frisch]

Remember how slowly the sun fuses. Protons last hundreds of millions (maybe billions) of years before they fuse in the conditions at the core of the sun. Of course DD fusion would be faster.

Metallic Deuterium ?

[mbone]

There has been a long search for metallic hydrogen, which is supposed to be (once made under high pressure) possibly both stable and superconducting at room temperature.

Given that metallic hydrogen is also supposed to be quite dense, I have to wonder if they haven't made metallic deuterium.

Re:Metallic Deuterium ?

[John Hasler]

> I have to wonder if they haven't made metallic deuterium.

No. This is something quite different (if it exists at all).

Not necessarily a gas!

[ve3oat]

"Will it expand (explosively one would presume) back to its original volume?"

Isn't deuterium just heavy hydrogen (nucleus consisting of proton plus neutron). Why would it necessarily be a gas under normal circumstances (at STP)?

Re:Not necessarily a gas!

[jbeaupre]

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess: Physics!

Re:Not necessarily a gas!

[BlitzTech]

Because the addition of a single (or even multiple) neutrons has a negligible effect on the chemical properties of a material. Just because the nucleus has approximately double the mass, doesn't mean it can behave that differently from hydrogen. Case in point: Noble gases. They've got enormous nuclei (especially by comparison to hydrogen and deuterium), but are still gases because they have very weak interactions with nearby atoms.

In short, deuterium is a gas at STP.

That's not to say they can't make UDD, but the pressure/temperature stability of the material is suspect.

Re:Not necessarily a gas!

[maxume]

It is well known to ordinarily be a gas at STP.

Re:Not necessarily a gas!

[reverseengineer]

Well, hydrogen is a gas at STP, STP being about 250 Kelvin above the boiling point of hydrogen, and while the higher atomic weight of deuterium does have an effect on some of its physical and chemical properties (and in the biological effects of heavy water), it is not so significant that it wouldn't be a gas under standard conditions. The assumed violent expansion has less to do with the normal phase properties of deuterium though, and more with the notion that the unbelievable promiximity of deuterium nuclei suggested here cannot be stable without gigapascals of applied pressure.

Leif Holmid's page claims this material has a bond length of 2.3pm. Picometers. 10^-12 meter. Now, the normal bond length of dihydrogen is about 74pm, so if these claims are true, the spacing between atoms has been squashed down by about a factor of 30. This distance is still too small for the strong interaction to pull the nuclei together- the effective range of the strong force is on the order of a femtometer, or 10^-15 meters. If you do happen to get the nuclei closer (by dumping in more energy), fusion would be expected to occur. Absent that, this means the predominant force at 2.3pm is going to be electrostatic repulsion between protons, which would only presumably be countered by applied force, like pressure from a diamond anvil cell. Take the pressure off, and the deuterium atoms should energetically move to increase their distances.

Re:Not necessarily a gas!

[reverseengineer]

So I used the word "promiximity" in my post. Proofreading would have been a good strategery there, I guess.

Re:Not necessarily a gas!

[RsG]

So I used the word "promiximity" in my post. Proofreading would have been a good strategery there, I guess.

Subtle humour, or delicious irony?

FYI: "promiximity" sounds like it ought to refer to a mix of proximity and promiscuity.

Re:Not necessarily a gas!

[Chris Burke]

Considering that I've gotten so good at automatically compensating for internet misspellings that I have to do a double-take when the word "loose" is used correctly, the word "promiximity" caused me no problems whatsoever. :)

Re:Not necessarily a gas!

[Jesus_666]

FYI: "promiximity" sounds like it ought to refer to a mix of proximity and promiscuity.

A person's promiximity is the distance at which a person will spontaneously undergo fusion with you and is a function of your repulsiveness and that person's tartiness.

Ultra Dense Planet

[MozeeToby]

Wasn't there an article a while back about an exoplanet discovered that was so dense the astronomers couldn't even begin to speculate what it was made out of? This would seem to be an interesting candidate for an answer.

Really, stop and think about just how dense this stuff is. Fill a soda can with it and the can would weigh in at 35000 lbs! Even if all you did was burn it or use it in a fuel cell, the volume to energy ratio of this substance is amazing.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[AndersOSU]

I'm trying to imagine what would happen if you threw a 35000 lb soda can of UDD into the campfire.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[canajin56]

It's so dense that a single pound of it weighs over 10,000 pounds!

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck moving it to where you need it.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Remus Shepherd]

You're right -- just think of what a boon this will be to the mining and drilling industries.

Because you know, that's all it's going to be good for. It's dense enough to fall through granite and limestone like they were tissue paper. I'm getting a figure of mechanical pressure that's about twice what hardened steel can take.

Fill a soda can with this stuff and watch it shoot down into the center of the Earth, with nothing you can do to stop it. If it's any consolation, after that it will probably fuse and explode.

I, for one, welcome our new swedish doomsday weapon.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Un pobre guey]

Burn it? It has no electrons, just nuclear particles held together very very tenuously. No electrons means no oxidation means no burning. This is an exotic state of matter whose existence is barely detectable. Too many posts here confuse it with ordinary fuels, of which it is not. It is not even similar to fuels in fission reactors, and as a few posts have pointed out its feasibility as a fusion fuel is not at all clear.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[mr_mischief]

I'm having fun imagining him trying to lift and lightly toss 35 thousand pounds of anything.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[supernova_hq]

You'd probably have very sore arms.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Yvan256]

Nice Futurama reference.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[supernova_hq]

Not really, it may be really dense, but chances are you wouldn't need very much of it.

The biggest problem with transport would be pressure (PSI). You can put a 35000 pound object on a well-constructed flatbed due to weight distribution. But putting it on an area 2 inches in diameter would probably punch right through the truck!

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Captain Splendid]

Like your comic. "The safe word is Nylarathotep" LOL

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[dkh2]

He has a special set of exercises with which he has already built up his arm.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you computed that on a computer so fast it does an infinite loop in four seconds flat.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[JordanL]

Can't you magneticly suspend it?

(Is not very familiar with Deuterium.)

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[invalid_account]

And just think about how silly the truck driver transporting it would feel trying to haul around a single can-sized load. It certainly wouldn't LOOK like ~17 tons!

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[geekoid]

No one close enough to see it will report anything. therefore nothing happens.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm trying to imagine what would happen if you threw a 35000 lb soda can of UDD into the campfire.

Not much.

There is not enough energy in the campfire wood to heat 35,000lbs of anything by a noticeable amount.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Fill a soda can with this stuff and watch it shoot down into the center of the Earth, with nothing you can do to stop it. If it's any consolation, after that it will probably fuse and explode.

Wouldn't it accelerate enough to shoot past the center of the Earth at first? It should be able to go to the other side and back a few times before friction slows it down enough to settle at the center. I wonder what would be the effects (if any) if the Earth had a hole through it.

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

right, tell us hot you make big flat Rydberg atoms... They are spheric. You may transport (1/2 cm)^3 of it on a single truck and anyway, 16 tons would fall down to center of earth too... As one of you said, that kind of energy would only be transportable in a spacecraft (but would never get inside it), otherwise they must burn it by small bits, immediately after production. IF we could produce it !!

C_cool_la_vie

Re:Ultra Dense Planet

[Anonymous Coward]

Mining / drilling eh? Sounds like it would be a little too good at it. How precisely, would they transport it to the drilling site?

marketing the study of physics

[rev_sanchez]

I don't think they could do much better than claim a major breakthrough in Hot Double-D Reactions.

Re:marketing the study of physics

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps if they use titium?

Cheap energy with zero emissions is social justice

[cryfreedomlove]

Imagine a society where personal transportation via cars is available with zero emissions and cheap enough for every human who wants this. Perhaps this Dueterium thing is the path.

The Air Force

[moniker127]

Anyone want to start a pool on how long it will take for the military to want to tip missiles with it?

Re:The Air Force

[EvilToiletPaper]

Given it's density, the missile would probably tip over before launch :)

Re:The Air Force

[DigitalPasture]

That was actually the first thing I thought of when I read the headline. This would make a much more efficient (and actually "cleaner") thermonuclear weapon. It might also lend itself to further miniaturization.

Re:The Air Force

[ArsonSmith]

So a large hunk of this may produce enough gravitational pull to actually tip missiles over? That would be awesome. Just yank them out of the sky.

Re:The Air Force

[RsG]

Depends on whether the bomb is still using a fission primary. They've already got those about as small as they are theoretically capable of. And the fusion stage can be scaled to any arbitrary size, you just don't make them that big anymore, since there don't exist targets for a 50 megaton bomb.

Plus, don't forget that all this does is reduce the energy needed for fusion, and decrease the volume of the fuel. The weight is the same, which is the more important factor in a warhead,

Now, if they can skip the fission stage, that changes things. Then you've got a nuke that can likely be made much smaller (both in size and yield) and much cleaner. Whether this is a good thing depends primarily on what it's used for.

Re:The Air Force

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know they haven't already? I mean, to me it seems obvious that you don't reveal that many details about how thick armor your missiles can penetrate. That way all enemies will either be designing unnecessarily bulky or too thin armor.

Re:The Air Force

[KeX3]

Now, if they can skip the fission stage, that changes things. Then you've got a nuke that can likely be made much smaller (both in size and yield) and much cleaner. Whether this is a good thing depends primarily on what it's used for.

Presumably lobbing them at the middle east, while dancing around singing "It's not a nuke, it's not a nuke, you can't do anything, wheeee!"

If they do make a cube...

[endothermicnuke]

I have a feeling it'll sink through the ground and end up at the centre of the earth.

Re:If they do make a cube...

[supernova_hq]

The closer you get to the center of the earth, the more mass is above you. After getting about half-way to the center, there would be quite a bit less force pulling you to the middle.

Re:If they do make a cube...

[Anonymous Coward]

whoa. never thought of it that way. like a lagrangian sphere inside the earth.

dig down far enough and at some point, you'd presumably be weightless when what is around you in each direction has the same gravitational pull?

or would said point not be weightless; you'd 'hover' there but there would be gravitational forces pulling you in every direction. too bad it wouldn't be strong enough to rip you to shreds; though i imagine a marshmallow sphere would expand

Re:If they do make a cube...

[Ralph Spoilsport]

After getting about half-way to the center, there would be quite a bit less force pulling you to the middle.

But: you'll have the other half of the planet's gravitational field pulling you down toward itself. There's a reason the center is in the middle.

RS

Re:If they do make a cube...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah but once you past the crust the temp goes through the roof

Re:If they do make a cube...

[supernova_hq]

Yes, that's pretty much what I said. On the surface (ignoring the fact that the earth is a sphere, not a tube), you have 100% of the earth on one side. Half way to the center, you now have 75% of the earth on that side, with 25% on the other. Since the 25% on the second side would cancel out with the nearest of the 25% of the first side, you now only have to calculate the remaining 50% on the first side which is 25% of the earth's diameter away from you (thus less force). But then again, that 50% would have been 50% of the earths diameter away from you the first time, so it would probably be about (ball-parking here) 66% of the gravitational pull.

I only did physics in grades 11 and 12 (though my teacher was amazing), so my physics are probably not perfect. I could do some elaborate calculations, taking into effect the center of gravity of you and the earth, but since gravitational pull is logarithmic (over distance), I'm not sure how exactly I would calculate that. If anyone has a more accurate calculation, feel free to add it.

Re:If they do make a cube...

[mathnerd314]

Actually, IIRC, gravitational field inside a solid sphere increases linearly with r for r less than R and drops off with 1/r^2 for r greater than R. In this case the field would be 50% of the field at the surface. I don't know where you got "logarithmic" from.

Of course this is assuming the earth is a perfect sphere of uniform density--if anyone has an even more accurate calculation, feel free to add it too ;)

Re:If they do make a cube...

[supernova_hq]

Ah, thanks. I thought there was something specific about spheres, but I couldn't remember what it was (it's been a while). My logarithmic mention was about the force of gravity given the distance between two objects.

Question?

[whitefang1121]

The real question is, how will it cost to mass-produce such a "heavy" item, and even if it deosn't weigh as much as he says, then how long would it take to even find enough to mass-produce it?

Re:Question?

[ResidntGeek]

No, I can assure you that that is NOT the real question. Don't comment on what you don't understand.

Could you imagine?

[Tarlus]

A cubic centimeter of the stuff would weigh 287 lbs. (130 kg).

How surreal it would be to have an object the size of a sugar cube that would be so heavy!

Re:Could you imagine?

[Dyinobal]

Just imagine if such a substance existed naturally and wasn't deadly under normal conditions. Weight rooms and fitness equipment would be so much smaller, or the counter-balance of cranes would be relatively tiny. A large number of applications exist for ultra dense materials it's a shame something more mundane and naturally occurring doesn't exist(as far as we know).

Re:Could you imagine?

[supernova_hq]

Some weight rooms are already starting to use heavy-duty springs for some of their equipment. Not only are they smaller, but they weigh a LOT less than dead weight and are easier to move and swap out.

Re:Could you imagine?

[dkh2]

Makes a great desktop paperweight for any area prone to the occasional hurricane.

Re:Could you imagine?

[Dyinobal]

Interesting I didn't know this! Then again I work out about as often as your average sea slug. Don't these springs become imprecise over time though?

Re:Could you imagine?

[camperdave]

It's called a Bowflex. The springs or tension rods could lose their springiness over time, but it would take a long time. Besides, it's not as if you've got to have exact weights for exercising. A pound more or less is not going to make a significant difference. Plus, if your workout regimen is as rigourous as you claim, you won't be wearing out the springs anyways.

Re:Could you imagine?

[supernova_hq]

They have a new one that uses disks with torsion springs inside. They take up quite a bit less room than the bow design, and still offer the same light-weight advantage.

Not a cubic centimetre...

[toby]

The FA says a 10cm cube, i.e. 1000 cubic centimetres, would weigh 130 tonnes.

Re:Not a cubic centimetre...

[Volante3192]

So a 1cm cube, i.e., 1 cubic centimetre, would weigh 130 tonnes / 1000, or 130kg.

They're just reducing the figures. The math still holds.

Re:Not a cubic centimetre...

[jsiren]

The FA says a 10cm cube, i.e. 1000 cubic centimetres, would weigh 130 tonnes.

Metric isn't that hard.

If 10 cm * 10 cm * 10 cm = 1000 cm^3 weighs 130 000 kg, then 1 cm * 1 cm * 1 cm = 1 cm^3 weighs 130 kg.

Not involving tritium?

[canajin56]

Such a D-D fusion reaction would be cleaner than one involving highly radioactive tritium.

Deuterium + Deuterium = Tritium + Proton (50%) or Helium 3 + Neutron (50%). Must be an unusual definition of "not involving".

Re:Not involving tritium?

[plut4rch]

That is true. However, most of the Tritium produced in the DD reaction would be burned off before leaving the reactor. This means that the advanced Tritium handling facilities of JET, for example are not required. This does make it 'cleaner' in a way, and means that the tritium is not 'involved' in the reaction per se - it kinda... appears in the reaction and most of it goes away afterwards. I think this is what is being implied here - no tritium is needed to start the reaction, nor are the handling facilities needed. DD is much cheaper than a DT reaction. However, DT is better for power production, and commercial fusion reactors will probably use the DT fuel mix. ITER will be running DT, and JET set its record with a DT mix, and will probably run more DT experiments in the future. Most reactors run DD however, because of its cost advantages, it's a little cleaner due to the lack of tritium handling required, and is useful for simulations.

don't let it go to waste

[DragonTHC]

get the Bussard collectors ready. We need to start storing this stuff!

Re:don't let it go to waste

[pandrijeczko]

Should that not be "Get the Broussard collectors ready"?

It is an extremely dense material...

[Carnth]

each pound of which weighs over ten thousand pounds.

Re:It is an extremely dense material...

[CannedTurkey]

lol.

two words

[barfy]

food saver

Duct tape is only half of the equation.

[Fuji Kitakyusho]

If it doesn't move and it should: WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't: duct tape.

Re:Duct tape is only half of the equation.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Good point. I forgot about the WD40. Slicker than greased owl shit.

but I think this deuterium stuff is likely to expand, quickly, so I think a plastic box wrapped in duct tape is the right answer.

Re:Duct tape is only half of the equation.

[supernova_hq]

What about duct tape box wrapped in duct tape?

Re:Duct tape is only half of the equation.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Bad idea - once the deuterium's done, you'll never get it open for reprocessing.

RS

Re:Duct tape is only half of the equation.

[Ihmhi]

Well WD-40 is basically oil, and plastic is a petroleum product... I think wrapping a plastic box in duct tape is the chemical equivalent of dividing by zero.

I am a skeptic

[u19925]

I strongly doubt you can make UDD in any large amount. The laws of QM dictates that electrons cannot reach closer to nuclei than Bohr's radius and hence they cannot cancel out the p-p electrostatic repulsion. In tiny amount, this may occur if somehow you can manage to create some external forces which adds in a right way, but at large scale, you can't do that. This is as bizarre as cold fusion and I refuse to believe it (I will believe it if they can make 0.01 cubic milli-meter of UDD with a mass of 1 gm and is stable for more than 1 sec).

Dilithium?

[actionbastard]

Bah! You want Deutronium!

Re:Dilithium?

[Sponge Bath]

Fused in a protective sphere of my patented, ultra-hard diamondium!

Re:Dilithium?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fused in a protective sphere of my patented, ultra-hard diamondium!

Feh, my diamondillium is 10x harder than your puny diamondium.

Re:Dilithium?

[Nefarious Wheel]

Haven't seen that stuff. Can you mine it with a skill of 450?

Re:Dilithium?

[SlashWombat]

Closely related to unobtanium!

From TFA and Researcher's home page

[DynaSoar]

No clue here as to production, but possibly in the references below. Anyone have access to these?

"A much denser state exists for deuterium, named D(-1). We call it ultra-dense deuterium. This is the inverse of D(1), and the bond distance is very small, equal to 2.3 pm. Its density is extremely large, >130 kg / cm3, if it can exist as a dense phase. Due to the short bond distance, D-D fusion is expected to take place easily in this material. See Ref. 179 below!"

183. S. Badiei, P. U. Andersson and L. Holmlid, "High-energy Coulomb explosions in ultra-dense deuterium: time-of-flight mass spectrometry with variable energy and flight length". Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 282 (2009) 70-76.

179. S. Badiei, P. U. Andersson and L. Holmlid, "Fusion reactions in high-density hydrogen: a fast route to small-scale fusion?" Int. J. Hydr. Energy 34 (2009) 487-495.

178. L. Holmlid, "Clusters HN+ (N = 4, 6, 12) from condensed atomic hydrogen and deuterium indicating close-packed structures in the desorbed phase at an active catalyst surface". Surf. Sci. 602 (2008) 3381â"3387.

176. S. Badiei and L. Holmlid, "Condensed atomic hydrogen as a possible target in inertial confinement fusion (ICF)". J. Fusion Energ. 27 (2008) 296â"300.

I don't see the necessity for brute force compression. H can be highly compressed while trapped in metal crystal lattice, such as in H saturated palladium. The individual energies are still high but due to being already in close proximity much of the squeezing has already been done. Such a lattice that can then be removed, dissolved, etc. might leave high density H droppings.

Re:From TFA and Researcher's home page

[reverseengineer]

I have access to the International Journal of Mass Spectrometry paper (the other journals are a bit outside of my field). The article is mostly about using mass spec to present the case that their substance really has a distance between deuterium nuclei of 2.3 picometers, but they touch briefly on production:

Close to the center of the apparatus, a K doped iron oxide catalyst (a hydrogen atom transfer catalyst) is used to produce H(RM) and D(RM) from normal hydrogen (1.5% deuterium) or pure deuterium gas at a pressure up to 2x10^5 mbar (uncorrected hot cathode gauge reading).

That (RM) there is for Rydberg matter, the exotic state of matter the hydrogen or deuterium is found in. Rydberg matter is a metastable state where atoms (or molecules) cluster together, not forming covalent or ionic bonds, but rather sharing a system of delocalized electrons, similar to pi-bonding in organic aromatic systems. It's also similar to the excited state of phosphorescent materials; as with phosphorescent materials, quantum mechanical considerations allow the material to maintain this excited state for a short interval before decaying to the ground state. The catalyst used apparently desorbs hydrogen atoms (or deuterium) in this excited Rydberg state into an ultrahigh vacuum chamber, where some will cluster together to form metastable Rydberg matter clusters. Yes, the clusters are apparently stable at room temp and without a diamond anvil; it's the relaxation of their electronic state which determines their lifetime.

In this experiment, the separation between atoms in the cluster is tested by using laser pulses to essentially blow away the electrons, leaving only a cloud of positively charged protons or deuterium nuclei. The rapid repulsion of all of these particles from each other is called a Coulomb explosion, and via Coulomb's law, the energy released by this repulsion is inversely proportional to the square of the initial separation distance of the particles, which it stands to reason is the distance they had as Rydberg matter.

For hydrogen, the results indicate that the atoms were 150pm apart, which is very impressive; it implies hydrogen atoms were together in a metallic state that was thought to require pressures like those in the interior of Jupiter. What's really wild though is the "inverted metal" state of "ultra-dense deuterium." By their calculations, the deuterium atoms were 2.3pm apart. Which is about 1/10 of the radius of a single ground state hydrogen atom. This is pretty much a dense state of matter that you'd expect inside a neutron star, and apparently you can make it with a vacuum chamber, a laser, and a hydride donor. What they're proposing:

We propose that this new material is dense atomic hydrogen (deuterium) of the type described by Ashcroft [14] and by Militzer and Graham [15]. In this dense atomic hydrogen the electrons can be considered to give the constant (negative) charged background, while the nuclei move within this charge density. (This state is either close in energy to the normal ground state D(1) or is in fact the ground state of condensed atomic deuterium.) This description is the reverse of the ordinary description of a metal, where the electrons move in the dispersed positive potential due to the ions [16].

I think there's more information on the process in one of the citations: S. Badiei, L. Holmlid, J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 39 (2006) 4191., but someone else will need to look that that one up.

Re:From TFA and Researcher's home page

[ResidntGeek]

Do you still want these? I can probably get them all for you. Post an email address, a temporary one if you'd like, and I'll send you as many as I can get.

ultra-dense deuterium

[HTH NE1]

Please, please, please don't let them call it deuterium ore .

Re:ultra-dense deuterium

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they are calling it UDD. Your paranoia of language is something you should seek professional help for resolving.

Solve Energy Crisis?

[Dareth]

If someone developed cold fusion or any other cheap/virtually free method for generating energy, the same people (big energy companies) would still sell the rest of us energy at whatever price the market would bear, with higher profits and less overhead for themselves.

Follow the green energy dollars. They are heading the same direction as the rest of the old energy dollars.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[jeff4747]

And the problem is.....

Why should we care if our "green energy" comes from the same power company?

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[RsG]

While that would be a bad thing as far as fairness goes, it would still be an improvement over what we have today.

Plus, in the long haul, all it takes is for the tech to miniaturize to the point where you can install it at home and go off the grid. Failing that, if the technology is cheap enough, smaller utilities might be able afford the start up costs and enter the market, which will introduce competition.

That being said, "cold" fusion is very likely a pipe dream. Fusion power generators will almost certainly be inertially or magnetically confined - "hot" fusion in other words. However, since the tech in TFA is applicable to inertial confinement fusion, the cold fusion debate is not applicable here.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[cheftw]

Was the competition chapter missing from your economics book?

Theoretically, (and hopefully) this would push the price down as more firms entered the market. I can see this happening in a state-sponsored way as soon as viable fusion appears, especially in this socialist EU of ours.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[RsG]

I'm not sure where you are in the world, so my comment may or may not be applicable. But my general experience with electric companies doesn't suggest they have to compete to stay in business.

In many parts of the world, the local electric company has a monopoly. In other places, there exist cartels (official or otherwise) that avoid competing with each other. In neither of the above cases do prices get driven down by competition.

Doubtlessly some people would blame this on state-sponsorship, and that is part of the problem. A larger issue underneath however is the high cost associated with building a power plant and the infrastructure to connect it to your paying customers.

Competition occurs most readily when start up costs are low, and customers can freely chose which source they want to get their goods and services from. When the barrier to entry is this high, no new companies come into being, and some of the existing companies would never have existed in the first place if they weren't founded or propped up by the local government.

OTOH, cheap fusion would probably drop the bottom out of the energy market, which might be a good thing. Realistically though, fusion won't be cheap until a long time after we have a working power generator.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[Vanders]

Yes, just like fission power plants would give us electricity "too cheap to meter".

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[RsG]

Never trust anyone trying to sell you something. That goes double if the sale involves shiny new tech that's still on the drawing board.

"Too cheap to meter" was not the point of view held by those who actually knew what it took to build and maintain a nuclear reactor. The engineers and scientists involved were probably rolling their eyes then, as you do now. The politicians and managers make unreasonable promises, and when they're wrong, shift the blame to the people who actually did the work.

Cheap energy is possible, it just isn't likely.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[Vanders]

This is my point. Fusion plants aren't going to be cheap to build either, not to mention the return on the vast investment so far they will require. Refining fusion fuel wont be cheap, either. Unless we all get Mr. Fusions in our basements, power that is "so cheap it's free" will remain out of reach for some time.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[RsG]

Actually, the fuel is a non-issue. You don't "refine" deuterium, at least not in the way you refine oil or uranium. You extract it from hydrogen bearing molecules, water being the most common.

We don't need very much of it, and we already extract deuterium from seawater for use in heavy water moderated fission reactors. Those existing extraction facilities can provide all the deuterium we'd need.

Assuming the method from TFA was viable, then you'd presumably shape an ultradense deuterium fuel pellet on site. You might even do it in the reactor proper, if it isn't stable enough to transport. That might add to the cost, but without knowing more about how they did this, I can't guess at how much.

Even if we want to use a D-T reactor, the only other fuel we need is lithium. We can use a lithium blanket around the reactor to capture neutron radiation and breed tritium. Lithium's available enough, and again, not needed in quantity.

So, forget fuel as a part of the cost of a fusion plant. The real cost will be building and maintaining it.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[ppanon]

The real problems are your main options for power generation:

• River hydro-electric
• Tidal hydro-electric
• Solar
• Geothermal
• Wind
• Nuclear
• Fossil fuel combustion (coal/natural gas)
• Nuclear fission

The first option requires large capital investment and expropriation of flooded territories, usually limiting it to government and large corporations. The next three are also limited geographically and in scale, and can require substantial capital investment (although solar can also be small scale at a cost of lower efficiency). The last two have significant pollution/long term risk issues and lead to strong NIMBY opposition to new projects. The fission fuels and products also lead to substantial government oversight due to its potential for abuse/weaponization.

Fusion would also require substantial capital investments but, with enough popular education and evangelism, should not face the same opposition that fission or fossil fuels would. So there's at least some possibility that you might be able to privatize power generation with it and reap the benefits of competition, unlike current power generation approaches (as California quickly found out). Then again, marketers had to rename NMR to MRI because idiots freaked out that the N stood for "Nukular", so Luddites manipulating the more clueless NIMBYs can't be counted out.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[WNight]

Then again, marketers had to rename NMR to MRI because idiots freaked out

That's the story, but MRI is a much better name. It says 'Imaging', which is sort of the whole point. NMR is more of a sentence fragment. And NMRI sounds kind of odd, more like 'An MRI'.

I wonder how much influence the Nukular-factor really had.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[1u3hr]

If someone developed cold fusion or any other cheap/virtually free method for generating energy, the same people (big energy companies) would still sell the rest of us energy at whatever price the market would bear

And if there were a "cheap/virtually free method for generating energy", that market price would be very low, as anyone could set up a plant and compete. You wouldn't need to spend billions on oil exploration or securing oil rights.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[Jedi Alec]

I'm not sure where you are in the world, so my comment may or may not be applicable. But my general experience with electric companies doesn't suggest they have to compete to stay in business.

Not sure about the GP, but I actually *work* for an electric company, and we sell our electricity to the average household at...a loss. Things start to turn more profitable once you're dealing with big customers. Ofcourse over here we've separated the infrastructure from the product, so there's like 2 dozen different companies competing in a country with 17 million people for the consumer/small business market. Must be some weird socialist EU thing.

Re:Solve Energy Crisis?

[ppanon]

Well, personally I think it's because there was too much accidental confusion with enema. As in, "bla bla bla...concussion...bla bla bla, better give this guy an NMR".

Re:Cheap energy with zero emissions is social just

[John Hasler]

> Imagine a society where personal transportation via cars is available with zero
> emissions and cheap enough for every human who wants this.

And a pocket nuclear weapon as well.

Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[StCredZero]

Fine, lets just solve our enrgy crisis then. *kicks rock, wishes for holodeck*

If we really wanted to, we could solve it quite easily. There's many centuries of Uranium and Thorium to burn in fission reactors, and nuclear waste is solved technically. (Again, the problem is political.) We haven't taken more than the first step to tapping the potential of wave energy, there's a lot more wind to harness. Solar Thermal could benefit from economies of scale and improved distribution, and there's tremendous potential untapped in the world's deserts.

There's even a market for Orbital Solar Power Satellites -- namely for remote military outposts that would otherwise need to truck in fuel for generators. (An order of magnitude greater cost is acceptable in that case, but this would start the cycle of industrial innovation and reduction of costs from economies of scale, and would lead to widespread Solar Power for civilian use.)

We could stop using fossil fuels right now, from a technical standpoint. It's just that we don't want to, for a variety of economic, political, and superstitious reasons.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[Timesprout]

Sweet, we can just give all the waste product to you to dispose of in a safe, cheap and environmentally viable manner since you seem to have all this figured out.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just that we don't want to, for a variety of economic, political, and superstitious reasons.

Well that, and the MAJORITY of people on this planet don't like change. Or, see it as an inconvience that they shouldn't have to deal with.

Other than that, YES, humanity could be progressing along quite nicely.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[RsG]

Recycle what's still usable. The USA doesn't do this because of an ill advised cold war ban on reprocessing technology, but Japan and France both do.

Separate the remainder and pitch the low level stuff. Vitrify it, bury it, forget about it. As long as it doesn't get into the water table in large quantity, we're safe. In small quantities, it's negligible. Worst case, we're the only ones who pay the price; low level radioactives aren't a threat to the ecology, especially not when the only water irradiated is in aquifers (we're pretty much the only species that has any reason to fear deep water contamination).

For evidence of the low impact of radiation, witness the resurgent wildlife at Chernobyl - plant and animal life is more loss-tolerant when radiation is concerned than human culture. A 5% increase in cancer rates terrifies us, yet impacts animals little (far less than human activity). This means the minor radioactives are far more a health concern than an environmental one.

What's left after the low level crud is separated, the really nasty stuff, is something like 1% of the total waste. This is the stuff we don't want leaking into the environment, for our sakes or the rest of the high order life on this planet. You're left with 90% of the problem condensed down to 1% of the mass. What you do with that is up to you; cart it offworld, bury it at a subduction zone, build a huge RTG and use it for power - there are several options.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[Anonymous Coward]

We could stop using fossil fuels right now, from a technical standpoint. It's just that we don't want to, for a variety of economic, political, and superstitious reasons.

From my limited perspective, the single only reason I can see that we don't move away from fossil fuels is that an extraordinarily small number of people are getting extraordinarily rich from it. Pigs will fly before they, or their successors, let that change.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[drtwo]

If you really wanted to. But there's also China that's adding coal powered plants at the rate of the total coal plant capacity the US currently has every three years with no end in sight.
And don't kid yourself with renewable energy, in 2005 less than 7% of the energy in the US came from green energy, which was mainly from hydroelectric dams and you can't exactly build those things everywhere.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[__aagmrb7289]

If you don't consider these part of the energy problem, then you need to re-examine your assumptions. You are also very likely an engineer. :)

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[khellendros1984]

Dig a giant hole in a tectonically inactive area with an extremely low or absent water table. Establish spacing+insulation regulations for the waste, and follow them. As previously stated, the problem is technically solved. That doesn't mean economically, politically, etc.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[mangu]

Recycle/reprocess as much as possible. The rest you vitrify and bury in abyssal plains. A glass cylinder buried under a hundred meters of mud beneath 5000 meters of ocean is as safe as anything can be.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[grumbel]

Are you sure that other technologies are more save? The people that die through the pollution produced by coal power plants might not die the same spectacular way as those that die through radiation poisoning, but they die non the less. Same is true for many other technologies. With nuclear stuff you simply have all the deadly stuff in one tiny spot, instead of spreading all over the world.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[geekoid]

Dude, we can do it with Industrial solar thermal.

Not that I am against nuclear, it just that this is cheap, effective, safer, and the fuel cost never changes i.e. free.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[geekoid]

we can now build generators that reprocess the waste to the point where the half life is 90 years. 200 years till background radiation level.

We can store it for 200 years.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[Dice]

There's even a market for Orbital Solar Power Satellites -- namely for remote military outposts that would otherwise need to truck in fuel for generators.

For residential power as well. PG&E has plans to put it into production starting 2016.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[StCredZero]

Dude, we can do it with Industrial solar thermal.

That would be my preference, but I wanted to establish that we already have a number dandy alternatives to fossil fuels *right now.*

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[Anonymous Coward]

The waste consists of three categories of material - uranium, transuranic elements (e.g. Pu, Am) and fission products. The "few hundred years to background" is true of fission products only. The transuranics last much longer.

There have been some *proposed* (not demonstrated) schemes for separating the fission products from everything else, but even those would most likely leak a significant amount of transuranic material into the waste stream. Geological disposal would still be needed. Furthermore, I don't think indefinite recycling of the TRUs is possible in current reactors - you need a fast neutron spectrum to do it more than once or twice.

Just sort out a good geological repository and have done with it.

Re:Energy is not a Technical problem, one of Will

[Anonymous Coward]

The energy crisis is as solved as the problem is war is solved. We just need to be nice to one another. War only exists for a variety of economical, political, and social problems.

D ice sinks

[Anonymous Coward]

since D ice sinks, it is more dense than water. H ice floats. This stuff is a million times more dense than D ice, but only hundred thousand times as dense was water? backwards material. Does it go back in time too?

"Dammit, what weighs seventy kilos?!"

[HTH NE1]

How surreal it would be to have an object the size of a sugar cube that would be so heavy!

Tarrant: A neutron star?
Avon: A microscopic fragment of one. It's the only possible explanation. It was unbelievably heavy.
Dayna: So how could Egrorian have planted it aboard?
Avon: He must have reprogrammed that automatic landing bay of his.
Soolin: And you moved it on your own?
Avon: I couldn't find Vila.
Vila: I'm glad about that.
Tarrant: Pity about the tachyon funnel, though.
Avon: We had no choice.
Vila: It's a trip I won't forget, Avon.
Avon: Well, as you always say, Vila: you know you are safe with me.

Muon catalysis?

[mangu]

If they replace the electrons with muons the nuclei will be much closer together, therefore the matter will be much denser. That's the only way I can imagine this could work.

Re:Muon catalysis?

[johnm1019]

Even in a bound state I'd be interested in seeing a stable Muon compound

Re:Muon catalysis?

[ceoyoyo]

You need a stable muon first.

Re:Muon catalysis?

[Plutonite]

You need a stable muon first.

You need a stable first, then you can get all the horses and subsequent horseshit you want.

*sigh*

Re:Muon catalysis?

[sFurbo]

In the same way you need a stable neutron to form a stable atom (well, any other atom than H-1, that is)?

Re:Muon catalysis?

[Urban Garlic]

> You need a stable muon first.

Actually, you don't. All you need is for the muon to live long enough for the fusion to take place. And, as it happens, muons live long enough to catalyze many fusion events.

Muon-catalyzed fusion is a well-studied problem, and one on which I did a graduate term project many years ago. The big problem isn't the muon lifetime -- everything works pretty well, you can get the muons to replace electrons in singly-ionized D-D or D-T molecules, and they even ratchet themselves down to the lowest-energy muonic states quite quickly, and after that, the fusion happens more than fast enough. When I did my project, the big problem was with muon recycling -- once the fusion event occurs, the muon might be ejected, or it might be bound to the He fusion product for the high-energy D-T case.

Binding to the He (called "alpha-sticking" in the jargon) is very bad, it makes the muon unavailable to catalyze more reactions, no matter how long the damn thing lives. As of about 1993, the state of the art was, you needed to use D-T fusion to have any hope of achieving energetic break-even, but D-T fusion was plagued by alpha-sticking, so break-even wasn't happening.

A longer-lived muon would help, obviously, since they're energetically expensive to produce, but the muon lifetime is far from the limiting factor in this process.

Re:Muon catalysis?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can have stable neutrons in atoms because the energy involved in beta decay of an neutron is small. The nuclear binding forces can therefore make the decay energetically unfavourable.

Good luck doing that for the 115 MeV -> 0.511 MeV muon to electron decay, especially when you only have *atomic* binding forces to work with.

Re:Muon catalysis?

[ceoyoyo]

I was waiting for someone to bring that up! You're the first! The AC, sibling to this post, nailed the explanation before I could post. This is one AC comment you SHOULD read.

Anyway, the neutron is only a little bit unstable. It has a half life of something like 15 minutes IIRC, and decay is only barely energetically favourable. Stick the neutron in a nucleus, where really, it ceases to exactly be a neutron anymore, and the decay is often highly unfavourable.

Replacing electrons with muons is a different kettle of fish. Muons are much more unstable (can't remember exactly, but the half life is much less than a second), and the decay is quite energetically favourable (AC gives the numbers). Plus, since the muons are only bound to atoms by electrostatic forces, there's really no way you're going to bind one tightly enough to have much effect on it's decay.

Re:Muon catalysis?

[ceoyoyo]

Take a look at the post I replied to. Actually, here it is:

Even in a bound state I'd be interested in seeing a stable Muon compound

So yeah, to make a stable muon compound you kinda need a stable muon.

For muon catalyzed fusion, agreed, it works fine (if you can find a good source of muons that happens to be close enough to your reactor that you've got some left by the time they get there (ie you need to make them yourself).

Now, to get back on topic, if you want to use muons to help out with the UDD fusion you need muons that are stable long enough to form a deuterium atom, compress into UDD, shoot into the reactor, then blast with lasers. Which probably requires a muon that is at least two or three orders of magnitude more stable than the ones we've seen.

Metallic Hydrogen

[Anonymous Coward]

This material sounds a lot like metallic hydrogen, to me.

But metallic hydrogen is postulated as being very lightweight degenerate matter.

I'd read that buckyballs might be able to squeeze hydrogen strongly enough within their interiors, to keep it metallic.

Re:Cheap energy with zero emissions is social just

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't go anywhere without my doomsday device. For... duck hunting. /oblig Futurama reference.

Large quantities?

[FatdogHaiku]

The researchers say that, if (big if) the material can be produced in large quantities...

OK, so what do they consider a large quantity? A cubic inch of this stuff will weigh in at over 4703 pounds, so you're gonna need a hefty set of waldos just to move the stuff around. Get enough of it together and you should be able to start doing "stupid gravity tricks"... if it doesn't sink through the floor first.

Re:Large quantities?

[geekoid]

If it starts to sink into the floor, but some more above it to counter the gravity pull.

How does this material compare

[bondjamesbond]

to ADAMANTIUM? Answer me that!

Re:How does this material compare

[Anonymous Coward]

It has the distinct advantage of existing.

Re:How does this material compare

[goofyspouse]

For starters, Adamantium is much more of a goody two shoes.

Is this stuff stable?

[cyn1c77]

How long is this state of matter stable for? That might be a good thing to tell the reader before expounding on how much promise this new material has. I am guessing that this new phase that it isn't stable except under heavy confinement. So good luck scaling up the quantities.

Also, I can help with wisebabo's question:

"I can easily imagine a material being compressed by some heavy duty diamond anvil to reach this density, the question is: what happens when you let the pressure off? Will it expand (explosively one would presume) back to its original volume?"

If it isn't in a stable state for its ambient pressure/temperature, it will undergo an expansion or phase change to a stable state. But it probably won't be explosive, unless the pressure is let off faster than the speed of sound of the material.

And I am assuming that you mean "explosive" in the loosest possible sense: explosive expansion. This would be a shock driven by only the energy stored in compression or phase change, because unless there is a nuclear reaction, pure deuterium isn't going to chemically react with itself, so no energy will actually be created.

improve the chances of starting a fusion reaction?

[Culture20]

Forgive my 1980's nuclear knowledge, but isn't starting a fusion reaction easy, but sustaining and/or containing it hard?

Can occur naturally

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only was heavy deuterium predicted over 12 years ago, but it should also be found naturally in relatively high concentrations at the most extreme depths of the Mariana Trench.

Wow

[Locke2005]

A cubic centimeter of the stuff would weigh 287 lbs.

Just imagine what a great paperweight you could make out of this stuff!

re: Wisebebo, Stability of the product

[sokoban]

Well, the stability of anything like this is determined by two things, the change in energy between the two states (ultra dense, and regular density) and the amount of energy needed to activate the change in state (activation energy).

Imagine that the two states are on either side of a hill. The higher energy state will be higher up its side of the hill than the lower energy state. The height of the hill will represent the activation energy.

If the activation energy is sufficiently high, you can isolate the higher energy product just about regardless of the difference in energy between the two states because the higher energy product won't easily gain enough energy to get to the crest of the hill and fall back down to the lower energy state.

IAAC,BIDHAMITTROYOTA
(I am a crystallographer, but I don't have any more information than the rest of you on this article)

*pssst*

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir. Yes you. Red Mercury. Very good, very good. For you, $100,000 a gram. Very good price. You want? You want?

Re:improve the chances of starting a fusion reacti

[RsG]

Depends on the type of reactor.

Magnetic confinement reactors (which are the toroidal "donut" shaped ones) are as you describe... more or less. I would not describe initiating fusion in one as "easy", but it has been done experimentally, and is easier than sustaining it.

Inertial confinement fusion is a bit different. You're essentially firing a laser at (or otherwise zapping) a pellet containing fusion fuel, in the hopes it will react faster than it expands. Getting the reaction to work, and more importantly getting it to produce net energy, is a PITA, which is why magnetic confinement gets all the focus.

The technique in the article could help make an inertial fusion reactor more viable. It could also apply to starting up a magnetic fusion reactor, since there's some overlap between the two, but it'll have no impact on sustaining a magnetically confined fusion reaction.

Never mind dropping it from a height...

[nuckfuts]

at nearly 300 pounds for 1 cc, there aren't many common surfaces you could even set it on without causing damage. That kind of pressure would probably snap an average dining room table. On a surface like asphalt it would leave a deep impression. On dirt, it would sink out of sight.

Re:Never mind dropping it from a height...

[ceoyoyo]

It's not quite THAT heavy. Old couches have those metal feet that have a surface area of about 1 cm^2. Say there are six of them on the couch, you're looking at putting eight or nine somewhat hefty guys on it. More than normal, sure, but not enough to make it sink through the floor. Probably not even enough to damage a wood floor.

Re:Never mind dropping it from a height...

[Remus Shepherd]

Yes, it is that heavy. You're not putting it's weight on those six legs, you're putting it on a 1 cm^2 area on one of the cushions. It's going to shoot straight through that couch.

And the floor. That 1 cc of UDD weighs 130 kg, so it's exerting 1274 N of force, or 12.7 MPa of pressure. The compressive strength of hardened concrete is 30-70 MPa. I posted an earlier estimate as a joke and got it a bit wrong -- you'll hold this stuff in a concrete bunker, but it's going to smash through a wood floor.

Re:Never mind dropping it from a height...

[ceoyoyo]

I said if you put nine guys on a couch, supported by those six legs, with a total area of 6 cm^2, you've got a situation that is analogous to putting that 1 cm^3 block on the floor (it's contact area is 1 cm^2, and the mass is 1/6 of that on the couch). So it's as likely to shoot through the floor as that couch with the nine guys sitting on it. You can generate an appreciable fraction of that pressure just by standing on your tippy toes, particularly if you've taken some ballet, or by doing knuckle pushups.

You're right, if you take more than a 1 cm^3 block of it, preferably something that's long and thin instead of a cube, then you're going to get some smashing happening, but the little block isn't going to fall through your floor unless you give it a running start.

There seems to be a lot of screwing up the units for psi to Pa conversion. The first Google hit I got that wasn't a PDF gave a 30 MPa figure that agrees with you, but the Wikipedia article on pressure gives a 10**-6 figure, which or doesn't agree with the conversion done in the Wikipedia article on concrete or with your figure. So I worked out out myself:

From units:

1 lbs = 0.45359237 kg
1 inch = 0.0254 m

so 1 square inch = 0.00064516 m^2
and 1 psi = 0.45359237 / 0.00064516 = 703.06957963915931 kg / m^2

Then:

1 Pa = 1 N/m^2
1 N = 1 kg m/s^2
so 1 kg / m^2, at 1 g = 9.81 Pa

Therefore:

1 psi = 703.06957963915931 * 9.81 = 6897.1125762601532 Pa
1 Pa = 1.4498820904301285 * 10**-4 psi

Which, ultimately, agrees with your 30-70 MPa figure. Note that the compressive strength of wood is ALSO 20-60 MPa, which agrees with my assertion that the 1 cc block of this stuff won't go crashing through your wood (or concrete floor). Also, the nine guys on the couch are safe.

Correction

[colinrichardday]

Running the calculation for our weight yields 101,000 ft/sec., or about 19.2 miles/second.

Except that the Earth's escape velocity (from the Earth's surface) is only 7 mi/sec, so it cannot fall faster than that (into Earth).

Your post

[Sybert42]

What does this have to do with the Singularity? I'm guessing you won't have much to do with the Singularity.

Discovery announcement retracted ...

[PPH]

... when it was discovered that the sample had been contaminated by trace amounts of Administratium. One of the densest materials known to man.

Re:Discovery announcement retracted ...

[w0mprat]

Is that a isotope of Beaurocratium? Element with a negative energy state that exerts a drag on the spacetime continuum.

Re:Discovery announcement retracted ...

[Jesus_666]

Is that a isotope of Beaurocratium? Element with a negative energy state that exerts a drag on the spacetime continuum.

An isotope of Pedantium, which is feared for its ability to lower SNRs.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ultra-Dense Deuterium Produced"

I don't get it...

New Unit of Measurement

[Schnoogs]

Instead of saying "100,000 times more dense than water, and a million times more dense than deuterium ice" why not use the new unit of measurement RO which is short for Rosey O'donald.

So in other words that cubic centimeter is about .08 RO

Re:New Unit of Measurement

[OrangeTide]

Nearly 3 times more dense than the average slashdot commenter.

Re:Cheap energy with zero emissions is social just

[speedtux]

Why would that society be any different from the one we have today? Almost everybody has enormous amounts of power available to them for nearly free today compared to 100 years ago. We still have poverty, crime, and wars. That's because human desires always grow beyond what's available.

And what about maths?

[VincenzoRomano]

If one cubic centimetre weighs 130Kg, its density is to be 130,000 higher than water, not 100,000!

Muon-catalyzed fusion?

[Richard Kirk]

The article is pretty unhelpful. However, it is possible to create very shirt-lived dense versions of light elements by replacing the electrons with pi-mesons. A pi-meson is a muon with the same charge as an electron but 500 times the mass. The meson orbits are therefore a lot closer.

Why does this help? Well the nucleus of an atom is pretty tiny when compared to the electron orbits. Rutherford, I think it was, called it "a fly in a cathedral". If you are attempting fusion, you try and pile one atom into another. As the two atoms meet, their electron orbitals overlap and repel. This repulsion will probably cause one atom to bounce off another obliquely long before the nucleii get close. Replace the electrons with pi-mesons and you can get the nucleii a lot closer before the orbitals start to overlap.

Unfortunately, the pi-mesons do not last very long (about 26 nanoseconds), so you have to be continuously making the things. The mesons are not consumed in the fusion reaction, so you can use them again, which is why this is called meson (or muon) catalyzed fusion. Each meson will have to be used several hundred times with different deuterium or tritium atoms if you want to generate energy. It is a bit of a loony idea but the physics is plausible. There's lots of articles out there if you want to know more.

Is this article about meson catalyzed fusion? It is impossible to say.

Re:improve the chances of starting a fusion reacti

[John Hasler]

> Inertial confinement fusion is a bit different. You're essentially firing a laser at (or
> otherwise zapping) a pellet containing fusion fuel, in the hopes it will react faster
> than it expands.

The laser pulse actually compresses the pellet. The pellet has a complex layered structure somewhat like that of a modern nuclear weapon (which is why laser fusion research was classified for a while).

> The technique in the article could help make an inertial fusion reactor more viable.

Right. A bit of this stuff at the core of the pellet and you'd probably be past break-even with current lasers.

there is no energy crisis

[h00manist]

what we have is a political/economic impasse. electric trains have been around for a while, with speed, pollution, reliability, energy/mile consumed, safety records, etc, orders of magnitude better than cars, trucks, buses, planes, boats, or hovercrafts. but they don't generate lots of jobs and move lots of money in the economy, exactly *because* they don't *waste* so much stuff. (waste) = (more work) = (more jobs) = (more money). reduce waste, and there will be less work.

Val Kilmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Previous art?

I think I saw this in 1985. The movie Real Genius?

Yeah, Val Kilmer made his laser this way too.

Popcorn-ed the house if recall.

My favorite redhead pr0n site...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://justfuckinggoogleit.com/

Yes but anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of you are right and very smart. Some others are intentionnally (or not) funny.

Does anyone know what material can resist a constant pressure of 130 tons /cm2 ? Imagine 130 cars attached onto a long, vertical & indestructible 1cm x 1cm stick. Would it stand here on the ground lol.

Such UDD would never look like a 10 cm cube, or it may "fall down" through metals, earth, magma or whatever until its final explosion somewhere we would forget it. What is more you don't chose the shape of rydberg atoms. Do they behave as crystals or as "big" atoms ? anyway. It just wouldn't stay there for long. Images mistake our thoughts through communicative metaphores. Of course such material wouldn't be stocked but used just after its production.

And it's 130 "tons/cm3" is just another inconsistent unit.

130 micro grams per micro meters^3 would be better. But sure it doesn't hit fools' minds, eh ?

Good night from France.