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Google Enters Race For Nuclear Fusion Technology (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Google and a leading nuclear fusion company have developed a new computer algorithm which has significantly speeded up experiments on plasmas, the ultra-hot balls of gas at the heart of the energy technology. Tri Alpha Energy, which is backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, has raised over $500 million in investment. It has worked with Google Research to create what they call the Optometrist algorithm. This enables high-powered computation to be combined with human judgement to find new and better solutions to complex problems. Working with Google enabled experiment's on Tri Alpha Energy's C2-U machine to progress much faster, with operations that took a month speeded up to just a few hours. The algorithm revealed unexpected ways of operating the plasma, with the research published on Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports. The team achieved a 50% reduction in energy losses from the system and a resulting increase in total plasma energy, which must reach a critical threshold for fusion to occur.
*twitch*
I'm just waiting for them to build a hive complex somewhere under the bay area.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
But they are serious. I don't even know what to say anymore. May Silicon Valley burn in hell.
Welcome our new clean energy overlords.
Fusion reactor
Curing cancer
Life extension (fountain of youth)
Driverless cars
Flying cars
Sentient AI
Did I miss anything?
Well, that ought to finally put an end to those meddlesome European kids and their lawsuits!
Google has nukes!
Don't like way Google runs their business in your country!?
Eat neutrons, baby!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Now it's only 49 years away from commercial use!
All this is just a standard inverse method. We've been doing the same thing on fusion devices for years. We call it reconstruction. Wake me up when a FRC lasts more than a few milliseconds.
Google's corporate attention span is roughly equivalent to that of a hyperactive two year old.
#DeleteChrome
when the algorithm builds a very large power plant that produces enough power to provide continuous, perpetual electricity for a large American city, say the size of the Denver metropolitan area.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Oxford lost all credibility years ago.
808 years ago ;-)
Fusion reactor
Curing cancer
Life extension (fountain of youth)
Driverless cars
Flying cars
Sentient AI
Did I miss anything?
They just released 20 million modified mosquitos in an attempt to wipe out Aegypti and eliminate Zika in Long Beach Ca.
"Is it better like this, or like this?" ...
"I, I can't tell..."
"like this, or like this?"
"I.."
"like this or like this?"
"they look the same"
"like this or like this?"
I DON'T KNOW!
I recently read some updates about Google's sister company releasing 20 million mosquitoes infected with some kind of Virus. Is google taking over all the domains that effect human existence.
So we have a Microsoft founder backed company getting involved in fusion, probabl,y grabbing some critical patents.
Gives new meaning the the phrase "blue screen of death".
Inertial fusion attempts will never be able to compete against tokamak or stellarator designs. This type of experiments delivers knowledge that is mostly usefull for nuclear weapons, so it's no wonder nthat this type of fusion research is the dominant one in the US.
. Optimisation and MI is fragile for edge/unexpected cases, so I'm not sure I want this piece of maths used to control an over-white-hot stream of plasma. At least, I'd want decades of testing before deployment and not anywhere near my house or family.
I'm not a big believer in fusion anyway, except that large, conveniently placed fusion reactor that we call 'the Sun'. If we must fiddle around with this, it's worth looking at the Stellerator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... that's come on, since 1951.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
So fusion is only 20 years away now?
What race? This technology is difficult physics, but not unknown. It has been 10years away since the 1950s. There is a reason, and Google software is most likely not going to change that reality.
ITER, this is where the money should go. Either that, or show us a new structure, and the math/simulations that say it will get to break even more efficiently. Or don't show us... just do it.
It's a hard problem. I had a Venture guy say something along the lines of "we expect the trend of everything becoming software defined to continue" as an explanation why hardware doesn't matter. Here is exhibit A that this is neither here nor there. Simulate the crap out of it, but something real still has to underpin it.. the world is, ultimately, physical.
So, yeah, fusion is hard.
... and immediatelly went into full riverdance knee-jerk mode clearly without even having a clue about what nuclear fusion is. The worrying thing is that people like you have a vote.
> Tri Alpha Energy, which is backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen
The design leads of TriAlpha described their design in a late 1997 paper in Science.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/278/5342/1419
Issues over the next year contained responses from other researchers. They invariably point out that the design simply will not work. In one specific instance, the original paper describes the "Q" of the reactor running on p-B to be about 2.3. One of the responses goes into this calculation in depth and calculates it to be 0.02.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/281/5375/307
This system will not work. As demonstrated at about the same time, it is HIGHLY unlikely any non-thermal-equilibrium system ever can due to massive energy losses through radiation. We've known this for almost 70 years, but the evidence by this point in time is absolutely overwhelming.
As far as I can tell, it looks like a high tech variation of the Trisops machine I worked on 40 years ago.
...are all we need then I'm your man. Get me a box of Taco Bell taco supremes and I could fuel the world.
"The technology is expected to be 5 to 10 years away from commercial application."
Yawn.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Practical nuclear fusion power have been 20 years away for the past 50 years. It's like Brazil, a country of the future, always.
This makes it into my 'ten funniest jokes on Slashdot ever'.
To understand how clever the parent's joke is, you have to reach the third sentence in the article linked, which you will first believe to be a misdirection, and then realize it to be an insider joke like they have loong liked to pull on each other.
Of course, if you're from 'there' or 'the other place', you might have caught it at once.
... Google MrFusion (Beta) to be publicly available.
Google bought Boston Dynamics, then got bored with them and attempted (and failed) to sell them again.
Google has now successfully sold Boston Dynamics to Softbank.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/business/dealbook/boston-dynamics-softbank-robots.html