Scientists plan to ignite tiny man-made star

And how are these tiny stars going to affect our global warming
This may cause very serious problems...

reply to post by nikolat23


Do you think we might be doing a little reverse engineering?

I was initially thinking about the increase in activity after out first nuke testing/usage, but now that you mention it, perhaps somebody has gotten a peak at a working fusion "engine" and we are trying to reproduce it????

Y'know, i looked at the picture and, well, speaking of Marvel movies, that's Cerebro. With a plot from Spiderman 2. Holy cow.

Anyway, on to other news, I know they've been working on it theoretically for a while now, trying to figure the principles, i guess they've gotten to the point to where they can actually start making practical work of the theoretical physics.
The LHC is set to reproduce collisions that occur in Earth's atmosphere on a daily basis, the intention si to perform a large scale, controlled replication of the events. Yep, first trial one met with some issues, it's new, near on cutting edge tech they are working on.

As far as I know, hydrogen bombs do go under the process of nuclear fusion when they're detonated, so in a sense this has already been done.

We just need to learn to maintain these thermonuclear reactions which is proving quite difficult.

However I'm really excited about the prospects of fusion power, which would quite likely solve all of our energy needs.

reply to post by RuneSpider


I looked at the picture, in the article, and thought "that's a giant pencil". So anyway, I'm really surprised that the end of the worlders haven't latched hold of this one yet.
If the LHC caused so much concern this should throw them into everlasting, holy seizures.

Why does this sound like the makings of a bad sci-fi movie where eveything is supposed to be ok and safe then when something goes wrong bam

The third planet, a small brown planet orbits the solar system of Sol which scientist believed at one time supported life.

reply to post by wheresthetruth


You realize that fusion bombs have been around for something like SIXTY YEARS, right? That probably more than 90% of the world's combined nuclear arsenals work on the same principles; using small fission weapons to ignite a fusion reaction?

It was weaponized A LIFETIME AGO. It's quite probable that millions of people were born and died of natural causes related to OLD AGE between the first detonation of a fission/fusion warhead and the present.

reply to post by BorgHoffen


It's been on various TV shows and magazine articles for like a decade. Not our fault you've never heard of it. The reasons is that it's not really all that important. If they succeed, it won't be a scientific breakthrough or anything, just an engineering breakthrough. Fusion is old news, scientifically speaking. The difficulty is engineering a fusion reactor that generates more power than it uses. Generally, everyone figures it'll happen sooner or later, once enough money and time get thrown at the problem. People have been trying since the 60s, and, while we're much closer now, might not yet be advanced enough. Not much to do but to watch.


Frankly, I'd place my money on Europe's new giant tokamak facility ITER, as being more of a success, fond as I am of inertial confinement reactors.

Originally posted by SLAYER69
Why does this sound like the makings of a bad sci-fi movie where eveything is supposed to be ok and safe then when something goes wrong bam

The third planet, a small brown planet orbits the solar system of Sol which scientist believed at one time supported life.

Seeing as it works on the principle of the hydrogen bomb, but intentionally on a far smaller but more drawn out scale, for the purposes of doing something more interesting than exploding, the worst thing that could happen is the reactor could explode, costing taxpayers millions of dollars in repairs over a few years. It can't even hope to match the scale of the smallest of hydrogen bombs, because it's not built to explode.

Just a thought;-

Given that this mini-star is being 'created' in California, if by some chance, it does go horribly wrong, could there be a danger of the San Andreas Fault being fractured, and the State of California falling into the Pacific?

Roy.

Lucifer project could never have been a reality, as it's been debunked more times than I can remember.
Unless you're going to add MASS to the body, it will never ignite.
So, just drop those conspiracy hopes and dreams- Let that old one die already.

Anyways, isn't there something along the lines of small man-made sun already?
I remember an article on some sort of technology Americans and either Japan or China having developed- Not a conspiracy load either.

I'll try to find that. Dealt with fusion I believe.

Anyways, Lucifer project is a crock. For crocks.

I thought they had already done this. Unless I am mistaken what they are describing is more than similar to Inertial confinement fusion. Which uses incredibly small pellets of fuel that are subjected to high power lasers to initiate the fusion reaction. From what I have read though they have only managed small examples, fusion only being sustained for less than a few seconds. Perhaps they are trying to sustain things for a bit longer, until they can make it sustainable over long periods it wont be a viable source of energy.

I wish them the best of luck, its amazing what we can do when we put our minds to it. The benefits of fusion power if fully realised are quite outstanding compared to current methods for getting energy.

It seems wiki page I have linked to has pictures of it working near the bottom, there is also the same picture on the Fusion page on wikipedia, I first read about this in New Scientist though if I remember correctly hadn't seen that picture until now.

reply to post by CuriosityStrikes


Yes!
That's what I was talking about.
I'm sure I've got it all mucked up, but that's what I was talking about, the fusion thing.
Good on yea

Originally posted by Dewm0nster
Lucifer project could never have been a reality, as it's been debunked more times than I can remember.
Unless you're going to add MASS to the body, it will never ignite.
So, just drop those conspiracy hopes and dreams- Let that old one die already.

Anyways, isn't there something along the lines of small man-made sun already?
I remember an article on some sort of technology Americans and either Japan or China having developed- Not a conspiracy load either.

I'll try to find that. Dealt with fusion I believe.

Anyways, Lucifer project is a crock. For crocks.

This one is just an inertial confinement fusion reactor. Can't recall any others (successful) in existence. Most successful attempts at fusion have been either tokamaks, or things that can't really hope to break even for energy, like the farnsworth fusor, or methods requiring particle accelerators.

This method actually is very little like a man-made sun. It's more like hundreds of minuscule fusion explosions being detonated in sequence to release energy. Tokamaks or stellerator or even fusor type apparatuses are much more similar to suns.

These sorts of experiments should be banned on Earth. If they want to mess with this crap, they should have to wait until we're set up on Mars at least. The stupidity of the human race knows no bounds. This just confirms it!

IRM

Originally posted by InfaRedMan
These sorts of experiments should be banned on Earth. If they want to mess with this crap, they should have to wait until we're set up on Mars at least. The stupidity of the human race knows no bounds. This just confirms it!

IRM

It's not as dangerous as the title makes it out to be. We're not actually making a star. We're replicating the fusion process that occurs in the center of the sun and attempting to sustain it long enough to be useful, which would solve all of our energy needs.

Splitting the atom was more dangerous than this.

Originally posted by GeeGee

It's not as dangerous as the title makes it out to be. We're not actually making a star. We're replicating the fusion process that occurs in the center of the sun and attempting to sustain it long enough to be useful, which would solve all of our energy needs.

Splitting the atom was more dangerous than this.

You say that, but you are not aware of the uses that this information will actually come to

reply to post by AmmonSeth

The end use of this, should it work, will be power plants. Weaponization happened with the H-Bomb.

There are many problems with fusion power plants becoming practical, so don't expect anything for a while.

"Fusion power is the energy of the future and it always will be."

Originally posted by AmmonSeth

You say that, but you are not aware of the uses that this information will actually come to

And you do?

The only thing that will come of this is progress on how to harness the power of fusion.

Originally posted by AmmonSeth

Originally posted by GeeGee

It's not as dangerous as the title makes it out to be. We're not actually making a star. We're replicating the fusion process that occurs in the center of the sun and attempting to sustain it long enough to be useful, which would solve all of our energy needs.

Splitting the atom was more dangerous than this.

You say that, but you are not aware of the uses that this information will actually come to

He's quite a bit more aware of the uses of the information than you. I can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that the bomb form has been around for longer than you've been alive. It's much easier to make it as a bomb. the hard part is making it NOT explode.

An inertial confinement reactor could make a good engine for space, but I fail to see how that would be a bad thing in and of itself.

At the moment the World is suffering from the lack of cheap, clean and renewable energy and this as you all know leads to the political and social ills that are affecting all of our countries in some way. All the issues with Oil at the moment and who controls its cost and availability has lead to our great Democracies bowing down in large or small ways to regimes that are a abhorrence to all civilized people.


I hope for the success of this project and that the scientists involved can overcome the huge hurdles and make this project work for all our sakes , and set us free from the tyranny of lack of energy. Will can have the power we need but no longer at any cost , think how that will change the world around us.

reply to post by DangerDeath


Agreed. As it stands, the LHC hasn't given us anything useful. I refuse to believe though that a multi-million dollar project such as this will end in complete failure. And as far as rejoicing goes, I just prefer to "hope" that there are still those out there who haven't lost all sense of morality. And that both these experiments will actually turn out to be great advancements toward the ever spoken of exponential jump in our understanding of this universe and how to use it for the betterment of life.