Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

It may be difficult to separate "theory" from "application," but let''s see if this helps facilitate the discussion.
Todd Massure
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Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by Todd Massure »

I've been thinking about the sun lately. It seems to me that fusion must be unstable even in the sun. If plasma fusion is really capable of a static self sutained "chain reaction" type burn wouldn't the sun be history long ago? I was thinking that what if the sun were a big ball of plutonium, instead of a big ball of primarily hydrogen? Wouldn't it have gone up in a huge blast rather quickly?
So it seems to me that maybe in the sun the fusion tends to lose the necessary pressure needed to maintain fusion (just like in man made plasmas) and must constantly move or expand outward in a shell to constantly find new areas where the conditions can be met, but only for a short time in each area. Or maybe it just dies out in one area and then is reborn in another area. If this is true, maybe it would mean that plasma fusion should be rethunk, maybe if the plasma were allowed to be more dynamic somehow, then possibly a sustained burn could finally be achieved.
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Adam Szendrey
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by Adam Szendrey »

In the core of the sun the pressure is tremendous . Fusion is driven by "gravitational confinement".
I looked up some numbers. The pressure in the core is somewhere between 2e11 and 3e11 atm. Aproximately 6e11 kg/s of hydrogen is consumed in the fusion process. The total mass of the sun is around 2e30 kg. If all of that would be fusion fuel , and all of it could be used up by the sun , it would last another 1e11 years.
But only 13 % of the avaliable hydrogen becomes fuel. The total percentage of hydrogen is 71 %.
From this the calculated lifetime is roughly 9.7e9 years, so the hydrogen percentage is probably meant at the creation of the sun. She's about 4.7 billion years old, so we can expect another 5 billion years, before our greatest source of energy, inflates and destroys life on Earth, which could never have existed without her...

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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by ChrisSmolinski »

I am not sure if unstable is the word to use, I would use "inefficient", no "slow"
would be better. Fusion seems to be a process that just doesn't want to
happen. It takes a lot of pressure, literally, for those nuclei to fuse. And, as
you've said, that's a good thing, otherwise the Sun would have burned out
long ago.

Of course, in more massive stars, the fusion process does occur more
readily, hence they have a lifetime shorter than less massive stars.

Fusion requires economy of scale to operate. If you have say a few hundred
solar masses, you can really get it cooking; you can burn through that in
millions of years. A solar mass, on the other hand, takes ten billion, plus or
minus. We can add a few more datapoints into the curve from stars of other
masses (all with lots of guesses since it is rather presumptuous to estimate a
process that takes 10 billion years, based on a century or two of data). Now
extrapolate out to the incredibly puny quantities of hydrogen we have to play
with. We humans even cheat using deuterium and tritium.

The obvious factor changing in stars is the gravitational force, compressing
the material. Nature gets this for free in stars. We've found that we can do it
too, using a fission device to apply some pressure. For a few milliseconds
anyway.

I came to this forum a few years ago convinced that fusion power was "just
around the corner". Heck, even hobbyists were doing fusion in their
basement, we must be close. Now I am convinced, even though it is poor
scientific form to say so, that man will not be able to harness usable energy
from fusion.
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by dlsworks »

I like the "unstable" angle myself. But it should be noted that, the sun actually consumes it's ability to produce fusion, as it grows. This would explain a temporal conservation path of the nature of the sun.
But getting back to the "unstable" model for fusion, or rather, that is what I would like to deem my concept. Was that, in the notion that if we cannot preserve the natural artifices of the sun, then we will not beable to produce the desired result. Consider a translation, that the term "unstable" be traded with the term to "change with intent of original concept". That is to "redirect forces" that would otherwise be kept into check. To produce a stable product, but with an unstable action. To redirect, by means of carriers or clever structural redirection. (eg. from otto cycle to wankle cycle). What can be said about the following idea. (originally submitted to Larry Leins, regarding his LINAC orientation) It's not unusually, novel, but perhaps it will give someone an idea.

Larry,
So how's this on for size. Consider a concentric focus system of 4 of your bad-boys. Then add close proximity superconducting electromagnets to fill in the ansitropic arrangment of the LINAC's. Then inject deuterium and tritium in ultra minute amounts in a primary phase. Then a relatively large amount of aneutronic fuel in a secondary phase. The first fuel is accelerated. Immediatly behind it, the aneutronic fuel is in hot pursuit. Finally they converge where they nearly meet, at proposed incedent geometry (tetrahedral) of said LINAC arrangment. At said point, prior to convergence. Magnetic field is induced such that it is out of phase of first fuel , by convergence of peak pulse, but in phase will secondary fuel. Primary fuel is ingnited as per LINAC energy and non-peaking magnetic compression (out of phase as described) to fill the asymmetrical compression induced by the LINAC geometry. At which point the aneutronic fuel is acclerated in.. even faster. Within the next few moments, the peak magnetic compression pulse coincides, with lateral coverage, with that of the secondary fuel charge, filling in the assymtries. The deuterium-tritium provides a seeding energy, as well as an expanding spherical wavefront topology to the anuetronic fuel. The aneutronic fuel should thereby undergo some conversion effeciency to the fusion process. But wait, it get's some interesting from here.
The magnetic compression wavefront should lag the exapanding fusion derived topology wavefront and induce another assymetry. The inverse of the the assymetric cojugate. There by deflecting the resultants of the fusion process back up through the long drift tubes(such as a cherry pit through the fingers). Wherby, the energies can be extracted effeciently. There after the process is repeated, at a good frequency.
The whole electrical extraction system should be of superconducting storage type, of which net energy can be extracted for both use and of powering the system entirely.
I think this solves many issues of ignition, symmetrical compressibilty as well as expansion and effecient extraction.

Darius
walter_b_marvin

Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

Never give up on man's enginuity. Electricity was an egg-head fad in the 17 and 1800's you know
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

The basic problem is not extraction but ignition. If one can get more out than in, who cares about the effeciency of the process? The most basic extractor would be a water to moderator water heat exchanger and steam turbine. But one has to get about 2 for 1 raw output to ignition input for this to work. Note that for gasoline the inigition energy to output energy is of the order of 1 to 100. Given this analysis, let me pose a question to the group:

Most fusion has bee tried with the simplist reactions. Are there more exotic reactions, including intermediatry short lived particles or antimatter that even though they might require an even higher ignition input energy, nevertheless produce a better ignition to raw output ratio?
Afer all, we really don't want the sun for a next door neighbor, do we?
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by Richard Hull »

The sun can do fusion only because of a perpetual, inexhaustable, gravitational confinement assist.

The Sun is, volumetrically, very, very lousy at doing fusion averaging only a few fusions/ sec/ cu meter. The sun has not sustained ignition. Our fusors can far exceed average solar FUSION power densities!........AS long as we keep pouring energy into the system.

The sun is self sustaining, but there is no fusion ignition there. Only perpetual potential enegy conversion, gravity to fusion. It is in a form of stasis between radiation pressure due to fusion plasmas wanting to expand and blow off the gas mantle and the crushing force of gravity. Gravitational potential energy is the virtually unlimited energy source in all stars.

In our fusors, we rely on a wall outlet and pay for every watt needed to do fusion.

I feel that continuous confinement of plasmas to do fusion WITHOUT GRAVITY for net power gain is an impossibility. Thus, I feel all earth bound continuous functioning plasma schemes to do power ready fusion are doomed to failure.

We have just not realized that stars do fusion only because of gravity, or, it just hasn't sunk in deep enough yet. We are beguiled and led to the "plasma trough" to drink up fusion, as we see the sun doing fusion with it. A second point is that with the right materials, we find that we, too, can easily do fusion here on earth with plasmas....And, damned cheap too; compared to solar energy densities. Unfortunately, at every turn, the confinement leaks or uses 100,000 times the energy we get back in fusion.

I still purport that fusion dreams involving plasmas are not far removed from someone feeling that with only one more magnet or just the right offset on his wheelwork, he will have a perpetual motion machine.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

My very point richard. If you want to fet energy out of fusion on earth, the sun's way is not it. but a perpetual motion machine fusion is not. fusion reaction DO release more energy that they consume for ignition. What is required is someone clever enough to light the match and get the tinder going etc.
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by Alex Aitken »

Richard,

"Only perpetual potential enegy conversion, gravity to fusion. "

This makes no sense gravitational potential energy is not converted and fusion potential energy isnt increased - its converted to heat and light, if you argue the sun is a source of perpetual free confinement, I'll agree with you and this is the secret to its abilities of a power source, it takes no energy to confine the hydrogen so any fusion is a positive gain.

The sun may have lousey power densities but it isnt trying to make massive amounts of helium or power, its doing just enough fusion to prevent its collapse. If fusion of hydrogen were more difficult to do the sun would shrink until the amount of fusion balenced gravity again. If you added some sort of fusion catalyst to the core the density of power would increase, the core would expand and the temperature drop and the density of fusion would be decreased.

I dont think its fair to call fusion unstable, in the same way fission inherently isnt. You start throwing reactor grade plutonium into a hole in the ground and at no point will get a big bang, fission will start with a flash of neutrons/other radation, things will melt and start to boil and the molten mass will start to melt its way through the earth but no bang. If you had a cauldron with a high enough melting point it could be sustained like a log fire. Its getting a bit dim throw in another chunk..... (with only the vapour of plutonium/waste and intense radiation to spoil the view).

Fusion density in the sun is very low because gravity is a very weak force. You need huge amounts of material to get a confining field. Electricity and magnetism are vastly stronger. Even if they require power to maintain the field (avoiding superconductors for example) as the confining volume goes up the cost to maintain the field per unit volume drops, so its only a question of how big a reactor needs to be to breakeven, everything else is engineering and economics.
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

I agree but go one step futher..... At hight energies the strong, weak and electromagnetic fources are of comparable strengths. In fact the electromagnetic and weak forces have been "unified". In or fusors we use only electromagnetic forces for confinement. The strong force does not have a long range. but the weak force in combination with the electromagnetic force might find a confinement scenario
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by AnGuy »

>I've been thinking about the sun lately. It seems to me that fusion must be unstable even in the sun. If plasma fusion is really capable of a static self sutained "chain reaction" type burn wouldn't the sun be history long ago? I was thinking that what if the sun were a big ball of plutonium, instead of a big ball of primarily hydrogen? Wouldn't it have gone up in a huge blast rather quickly?

Fusion in stars is balanced by the pressure of plasma and gravity. Gravity compresses matter, and the heat created by fusion expands matter. The higher the compression of gravity, the more hydrogen is fused. The higher the rate of fusion, the hotter and more expansion is created (Ying vs Yang!).

However, Stars are only stable when the fuse Hydrogen. When large Stars that exhaust thier hydrogen, they go out with a bang and collapse into neutron stars or black holes. Smaller stars like our Sun, heat up as they are forced to fuse helium, and expand into red giants, and shed the majority of their mass.
walter_b_marvin

Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

This term "stability" is used rather loosely. In fact the sun is not stable, as it burns more matter than falls into it, and will eventually collape. According to http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-082.htm it shrinks at about 5' per hour (Ignore the creationist furvor, as they assumed the shrinkage rate is constant a gross, and perhaps deliberate error)
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by Alex Aitken »

The term stable can also be interpreted as something not prone to sudden fluctuations. It does not have to be unchanging overall, eg you can have stable combustion. I think you are confusing it with the term 'steady state'.
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by Richard Hull »

Gravity is the sole source of both confinement and fusion energy in any star.

Let us assume gravity is just a confinement only energy source. What is the fusion energy source? It takes seed energy to fuse any nuclei. Where does it come from? There is no other source of energy in a pile of hydrogen. The gravity supplies both the heating energy to DO fusion and the Force needed to confine it as well. Once we are fusing, the fusion energy balances against the gravitational energy. Graviational energy keeps the reaction going. The fusion reaction can't self sustain without gravity beng forever present. Just as it could never start in the first place without gravity supplying all of the energy needed to fuse. Virtually all of the exothermy in the reaction goes into expanding the gas against gravity to control the rate of burn. Different solar masses burn at greater or lesser rates based on their mass.

The question is not a matter of stability. Fusion and fission are very stable processes that proceed without flinching every time correct conditions are present. Any exoergic process seeks to dismantle itself and expand materials around it via some form of pressure, either mechanical of electromagnetic. This is as true for chemical dynamite and nuclear fission and fusion. All exoergic reactions proceed from stable materials in a violent manner. In theory, stable materials can be reacted exothermically and stable wheelwork can be assembled that use the energy released, directly.

Fusion suffers over dynamite and fission which rely on zero confinement to function and which need no significant seed energy to function once the stable components are assembled correctly. Fusion demands that its stable components be tremenedously energetic to start with and confined or accelerated into collision. Here is the big difference. Massive seed energy is demanded up front.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by Todd Massure »

Well I realize now that I'm pretty uninformed about solar fusion, but this discussion has been very interesting. So according to Richard there is nowhere in the universe that fusion really produces more energy than goes in (ie gravitational potential energy as seed energy in the sun). I'm sure Richard knows what he's talking about, but it's very of dissapointing to think that it is true, I mean where does that leave us?
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by dlsworks »

Todd,

Do not be dissappointed. You are hearing the lamentations of the stacked opinion of a thousand disappointed physcists and fusioneers alike. It is the nature of the universe to prolong it's existence. It does this, recently, in "universe terms" at the level of dissention. It is the social "binding force" of makind. The sole purveyor in these terms.

Darius
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by Todd Massure »

Well, even though some of these thoughts and facts may be discouraging, it somehow makes sense as far as conservation of energy in the universe goes. It's been a while since I've done much reading on the subject, but I believe that many theoretical physicists now believe that the total energy in the universe is zero, this is what I believe also. If kinetic energy and EM radiation has a positive value then I think of gravity as having a negative value. Even though gravity is a relatively weak force, it is the big boy in cosmic terms and just might cancel out all energy (including that which is tied up in mass of particles) to a grand total of zero. Certainly all this is over simplified, but just for the sake of conceptualization, it works for me. So if the seed energy for stellar fusion comes from gravity, it just makes sense to me in the big scheme of things. Any thoughts?
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by dlsworks »

Todd,

Yes, consider the new and recently accepted theory in the scientific community that particles are formed from free-space spontaneoulsy!
And also the other accepted theory that, ".....all the matter of our Universe was produced by an asymmetric reaction... ".

I t has to be. I do not believe that the universe is a zero sum "game". Infact I would go as far as to say , it is not a zero some game, "andI believe this as a fact." Although, I do allow for the zero sum contigency. I believe that the universe is a propogating, greater than zero, entity. That allows for zero sum mechanics, in lieu of special temporal situations. Otherwise the universe does not exist! What was before it, if it is in flux.

But this is some serious thought mechanics, for serious people. That is, those whom can be serious enough to laugh at themselves. You see all the hard science dissolves, when you consider that the intelligence that substantiates it is prone to the effects of it. This catch-22 situation is negogiated by the experimenter. And is subject to the rules of, the greater bound, of the experimeter,.... that which is not known to him. Again, otherwise why bother to even experiment.

It's a game and does not need to be confounded by the heavey handed likes of those whom wish to contest this view point as untrue in the accepted scientific world. It just takes a true genius to expose it. But I should not be so heavey handed myself.

Darius

ps. just getting tired of the likes of the familiar crowd acting as self proclaimed fact checkers. And purveyors from those ends. You guys really shed a darkness on the momentum of discovery and innocent ingenuity. Your words, although based heavly in well known facts are dressed with personal failures....in my opinion rooted in the cold facts of the sciences that form the foundation of the clout contained with-in.
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by servant »

In considering the stability of natural fusion processes, it seems to me that we are seeing events with low probability occuring in a system with negative feedback. What is needed is to establish a positive feedback loop so that any fusion occurance causes the production of more. The reaction must be directed somehow back onto itself to cause a relaxation type of oscillation. This could result in a complete "burn". It may be that the only way to get a high yield with fusion is through a deliberately unstable positive feedback "pulsed" system
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by Richard Hull »

The fusion in stellar furnaces is indeed a form of relaxation oscillator with hysteresis in evidence. This is an obseved fact.

Also, I never said that fusion is a loss system taking more energy to produce than it consumes. Re-read my post. I constantly use the words "exoergic" and "exothermic". These words MEAN more energy out than in. The reactions are well understood in hot fusion and have been so for years and years. All solar fusions have to be exoergic or there would be no stars!

Why do you think there has been the 55 year race to corale fusion? It always produces vast amounts more energy output than it takes to produce per unit fusion based on simple acceleratory calculations.

In stars, the fusion reaction is fighting gravity and this takes more energy than gravity can supply to resist the fusion process. Thus, a stasis point of fusion burning is reached where the energy created per unit volume at some point in the solar structure beats out gravity by radiation and dynamic pressure!

Fusion of the H isotopes is always exoergic and always produces more energy output than is required to force the fusion to occur in the first place.

It is containment that kills fusion on earth! We have to pay dearly for containment and are total bunglers in the effort and probably always will be. Our containment always leaks and makes for a very inefficient use of seed energy. Almost all of the fusion seed energy on earth is directed at containment which consistently fails to put the system even near the goal post of over unity net production. On the sun, containment is zero cost. So much so that the very containment also supplies all the seed energy to actually DO FUSION! Once fusion begins, gravity in the more energetic areas doesn't stand a change against it over unity production until, somewhere in the contaiment blanket of gas, the fusion rate starts to drop due to reduced density and temperature and gravity contains and holds all the rest of the stellar outer shell.

Confinement at the hands of man..............................

On earth there are three forms of fusion confinement..... Electrostatic, magnetic and inertial.

Electrostatic confinement is really cool. Here we are using nature's normal and orginal master force.... charge. Unfortunately, we are limited by the laws against destruction of charge as like polarities repel up to a point. The force is more than enough to create fusion energy (acceleration of fusible nuclei as in an accelerator target system). Unfortunately, it cannot, by law, contain the fusion forces as much of the resultant energy is EM and neutral matter particles which leak past charge barriers.

The absolute worst and most stupid form of containment is magnetic confinement. Here we take the master charge and down convert and bastardize its value to create a second order force in the universe....magnetism. magnetism is not a primary force in nature, but a secondary one and as such costs dearly to produce. We must be forced to move charges around to get magnetism. The conversion is poor and imperfect always creating losses via heat and EM radiation none of which join in any fusion reaction that we are trying to contain. The illusion and attraction of magnetic confinement never seems to lose its charm to would-be fusioneers.

As fusion is dynamic, so must be any magnetic confinement. Permanent magnets will not do.

Inertial confinement is a stab at fake gravity and a nice effort. It is successful in stabs (pulsed efforts). Unfortunately, we are not good at recovering energy produced in stabs and the losses are high (as in the small but controlled and contained explosions captured in the very inefficient gasoline engine).

Attaining critical fusion energy.........................................

There are two ways commonly used to attain the critical energy of fusion and this is totally asside and separate from containment.

The first method is to bulk heat a bunch of reactant as in the tokamak and other arc plasma systems. This is really just "maxwellian space heating" and suffers all the attendant problems with such a system. Gross energy conversion iefficiencies via all manner of loss mechansims abound, (thermal, IR, magnetic, radiational). This is how the sun works and why man has had a long love affair with space heaters.

The second way to attain fusion energies is electrostatic acceleration of ions. This is almost lossless in its pure form and is what a lot of fusion systems, including our fusors use. Losses creep in here outside of the actual acceleratory process. It costs energy to make ions and velocity space collisions of neutrals is common. Recombination is rampant and is a huge lose factor. Finally, we can only produce so many ions via electron guns or bulk ionization and this limits the ultimate "throughput" of such systems. Usually, in trying to ionize in bulk, we actually just make an arc system akin to the tokamak, carrying its losses over to the electrostatic environment.

Combinational systems doing fusion in velocity space such as intertial-electrostatic confinement fusion are much kinder and gentler, but the power density just isn't there and other losses keep the method from success.

Gravity always works, but the masses of needed reactant are stellar in size, but alway proceed directly to functional, practical fusion.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

The argument these creationists made (albiet with many errors) is that a constant gravitational collapse of a star could in theory, power its energy output. They rightly point out that this woulod mean much shorter stellar evelotuionary times than appear to be observed. The geologic evidense is against them (so when did true believers actually listen to contrary evidence?) Some gravitational collapse probably does contribute to stellar energy, but as they also point out only the outer layers are collapsing, the core is stable.
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

Richard is confused on this issue. The basic nuclear reactions produce net energy, otherwise hydrogen fusion weapons would not work. The issue of getting energy back from a fusion reaction on a macroscopic scale is a different issue, and an engineering, not theoritical problem. One exampe is indeed a fusion weapon. So it is possible to harness fusion power on a macrosscopic scale as well. The onlny challange that remains is to find a method for controlling fusion that fits our everyday energy needs somewhere in between these two extremes. Its an engineering problem. Remember it was well ove 100 years between the first manned glider experiments and jumbo jets
walter_b_marvin

Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

Nonesense. The "universe " could care a rat's a__ about what man does
walter_b_marvin

Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

strength or weekness of forces is relative to the distance over which they act and the distance from which you observe. If fact at high enough energies it is theorized that all forces are of comparable strength. This has been proven for the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces, which are now called the electro-weak force. The concept that the universe has net zero energy is an appealing one, but cosmology at that level is a strange beast and who really knows for sure. I like the sadisfying concept of the Universe being the wake of a virtual particle event. Concider the virtual particle wake of two supermassive spontaneously created particles. These particles might have the mass of trillions of galaxies. Theoritically such an event is possible, although exceedingly unlikely. The again, the void of space would have a lot of time for this to occur. Smaller virtual partical events occurred before this, but their bubbles collapsed back into themselves. Our bubble is still expanding in 4 or more dimentions. But who knows for sure hopefully the experiments to measure the actual mass of the Universe will yield fruit, then at least we will know if we are destined to contract or not.
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Re: Is fusion inherently unstable? and should we be glad?!?!?

Post by walter_b_marvin »

I agree this is one approach. I concieve of a ping pong paddle oscillator. Basically one applies to a fusor a sharp voltage wack that ionizes the region between the electrodes almost totally. Then one sits back long enough for the resultant ions to fly into the center and back out into the inner electrode region, then wack 'em again. It occurs to me that there is an optimum "wacking" frequency and duty cycle based on geomenty and materials and pressure.

P.S. Yeas it is a wacky idea....
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