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Fusion Power Breakthrough Near At Sandia Labs?
An anonymous reader writes "An achievement that would have extraordinary energy and defense implications might be near at Sandia National Laboratories. The lab is testing a concept called MagLIF (Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion), which uses magnetic fields and laser pre-heating in the quest for energetic fusion. A paper by Sandia researchers that was accepted for publication states that the Z-pinch driven MagLIF fusion could reach 'high-gain' fusion conditions, where the fusion energy released greatly exceeds (by more than 1,000 times) the energy supplied to the fuel."
What do you call something that smashes things together but doesn't exist?
Practical applications are now only fifty years away! :p
How much energy goes into the production of the liner tubes, which are apparently eaten away throughout the course of the fusion reaction? Obviously this is all preliminary research, but I still think I'm missing something.
Insert self-referential sig here.
Of course not, they buy out and extinguish the evidence, duh!
I made a working engine that ran off of tap water. Then the oil companies had me killed.
> No, see as you approach feasibility, your likelihood of being bough by a competing producer to be extinguished (see gasoline) becomes multitudes greater.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but do you have a reference?
My own suspicion is that as you approach feasibility, government grant money tends to increase, but if you *achieve* practical feasibility, grant money evaporates. Therefore, to maximize funding, you must asymptotically approach feasibility.
But I'm willing to hear a different theory.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You were lucky. The oil companies beat me around the head and neck with a broken bottle, sliced me in two with a bread knife, then danced around my grave singing "Hallelujah!"
Although both terms are hot... one is several million degrees hotter than the other
Both take 40 years to begin production.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Some people would take that as a challenge.
It's the same way God planted Dinosaur bones to test our faith...
Simply scale up the reaction to a level where it is self-sustaining on the ambient hydrogen in space, and then collect the resulting photon emissions with an array of photovoltaic converters.