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Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

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Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#71

Post by gus_massa »

hotpockets wrote: post #47
lisper wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is newsworthy despite "They didn't get more fusion power out than they put in with the laser"? It's not newsworthy, but most reporters are not educated enough to tell the difference between a real breakthrough and a bogus press release.

It is newsworthy. We generated fusion be shining light at molecules, which never has been done before. Aside from that, if you read the article you became slightly more science literate.

Fusion with laser has been done before, by the same team. The difference is that they improve the experiment and this time they get ~50% more energy. Or if you evaluate it in other words, the efficiency improve from ~0.6% to 1%, or less depending on what do you define by input energy. More details in other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227620

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#73

Post by Finster »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #54

Here's the paper. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, nature -ally. The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289 [WaPo]…

I'm on campus right now and can download the PDF. I'd upload it, but I don't want to pull an Aaron Swartz. EDIT: Okay here, but I have limited bandwidth so get it while you can: https://mega.co.nz/#!CNgVhZra!JcsLGB5y0FGUffI4rdyNr-BBl82YJD...

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#74

Post by DougMerritt »

Kroem3r wrote: post #63
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily true. A lot of great innovations have originated from military research. War necessitates innovation. Not to say that we should just funnel everything into the military, but one should not underestimate its importance in the technological landscape.

This seems like a myth to me. Radar? Rocket engines? Turing? Stealth bomber technology? Nuclear powered aircraft carriers? ICBMs? Stuff that was happening regardless of a war and stuff that was nearly useless. Perhaps military first adopters are a net positive; like, the first buyers of a technology who will pay top dollar for working prototypes. But what on the original innovation side can you actually attribute?

Long wavelength radar pre-dated WWII, but it was barely useful and required shore-mounted towers.

Short wave radar, as used on planes ever since, was developed as part of the war effort by the MIT Radiation Lab.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_Laboratory

Rocket engines were known before WWII (a thousand years ago in China, and efforts like Goddard in the early 20th C), but you can't disregard the Nazi Germany invention of the V2 just because of that; it was a big deal, not just a fleshing out of prototypes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket#World_War_II

"Development of stealth technology likely began in Germany during World War II"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_aircraft

Later stealth, and nuclear carriers, and ICBMs, were a result of the cold war. I don't see how it matters whether the war is hot or cold.

I'll grant you Turing (aside from crypto), not that anyone is claiming differently.

The Internet directly arose from the Arpanet, which was purely a DARPA (Department of Defense) project, and there are lots of other well known examples.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpanet

> stuff that was nearly useless.

Citation needed.

> But what on the original innovation side can you actually attribute?

Short wavelength radar is inarguable, regardless of whether cold wars count.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#75

Post by TeMPOraL »

Finster wrote: post #73
throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #54

Here's the paper. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, nature -ally. The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289 [WaPo]…

I'm on campus right now and can download the PDF. I'd upload it, but I don't want to pull an Aaron Swartz. EDIT: Okay here, but I have limited bandwidth so get it while you can: https://mega.co.nz/#!CNgVhZra!JcsLGB5y0FGUffI4rdyNr-BBl82YJD...

They won't get after you because of one paper. Please, do it for the betterment of mankind :).

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#76

Post by [deleted] »

Finster wrote: post #73
throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #54

Here's the paper. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, nature -ally. The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289 [WaPo]…

I'm on campus right now and can download the PDF. I'd upload it, but I don't want to pull an Aaron Swartz. EDIT: Okay here, but I have limited bandwidth so get it while you can: https://mega.co.nz/#!CNgVhZra!JcsLGB5y0FGUffI4rdyNr-BBl82YJD...

[deleted]

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#77

Post by yosyp »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #54

Here's the paper. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, nature -ally. The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289 [WaPo]…

cheers

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26434203/nature13008.pdf

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#78

Post by gnoway »

valarauca1 wrote: post #34
Oculus wrote: post #22

> led NIF's critics to label the facility an enormous waste of taxpayer dollars > government shifted NIF away from its fusion goals to focus on its other mission: simulating the conditions inside nuclear weapons I think right there lies the problem with our world. People take up more issue with a multi-billion dollar research facility for science than one for military applications. If we spent a small fraction of the…

The cost of the B-2 Bomber program has cost as much as ~5 Large Hadron Colliders. B-2 bomber program cost 44.75 billion[1] LHC cost ~7.5 Billion Euro ~9billion USD.[2] [1] http://www.fas.org/man/gao/nsiad97181.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost

Does this adjust for inflation? Because I think if not, these numbers are even more alarming.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#79

Post by TrainedMonkey »

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #54

Here's the paper. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, nature -ally. The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289 [WaPo]…

I talked to a friend who works there, this is more of a PR move. Back at the lab it is business as usual.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#80

Post by unepipe »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #75
Finster wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on campus right now and can download the PDF. I'd upload it, but I don't want to pull an Aaron Swartz. EDIT: Okay here, but I have limited bandwidth so get it while you can: https://mega.co.nz/#!CNgVhZra!JcsLGB5y0FGUffI4rdyNr-BBl82YJD...

They won't get after you because of one paper. Please, do it for the betterment of mankind :).

It's not worth it.

The terrorists won.

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