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A Star in a Bottle

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101–110 of 162 posts

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#101

As a child, I read Friday by Robert A Heinlein, which portrayed a future in which energy needs are addressed by energy storage devices called "Shipstones", which are described as a way to pack more kilowatt-hours into a smaller space and a smaller mass than any other engineer had ever dreamed of. To call it an "improved storage battery" (as some early accounts did) is like calling an H-bomb an "improved firecracker."…

"Also, what happens if the mechanisms that contain the "Star in a Bottle" fail? Will the French Alps suddenly and catastrophically acquire a new valley?"

As others have said, this is hot fusion not cold fusion, so the answer is most likely it would damage some very expensive components. The holy grail of fusion research (which so far seems largely unachievable) would be fusion at something relatively close to room temperature (so called cold fusion), as opposed to this experiment where you're dealing with temperatures comparable to the heart of the sun. The reason that's such a big deal is that before actual fusion occurs on a hot fusion reactor, you obviously must first reach the target temperature which takes a not inconsiderable amount of energy to achieve, and then further energy to maintain. The trick to making hot fusion practical is to somehow get more energy out, than you have to put in to maintain those insanely high temperatures. Obviously if you can find a way to still achieve fusion at a much lower temperature the situation becomes much easier as you've got a bigger gradient to play with (I.E. it produces the same amount of power, but requires much less power to get it to the state necessary to produce that power).

In order to achieve the massive temperatures necessary they do a couple things. First, you're talking about an incredibly tiny volume of space that's being heated to these temperatures (think of this as the difference between boiling the ocean vs. boiling a cup of water). Secondly they reduce the pressure to near vacuum. Thirdly they maintain these conditions inside of a magnetic bottle which is necessary primarily to provide insulation, both for the fusion material (the hydrogen) and for the apparatus that are heating and containing the fusion material (super conductors like it very cold and must be very close to the fusion material, so you're talking a pretty steep temperature gradient here).

Now, assuming they actually get this thing working, it's going to consist of a very very tiny super hot ball of very very thin hydrogen gas, surrounded by a near vacuum, and then a shell of super cold super conducting magnets. If containment were to suddenly fail, that small ball of gas would very rapidly expand outward until it collided with the walls of the containment vessel which would most likely consist of super conducting magnets, and whatever insulating material they can find to slap between them and the hydrogen. But remember, this is a very tiny quantity of hydrogen and it's surrounded by what is effectively a vacuum, as it expands outwards it will rapidly cool and become even more tenuous. Some of the atoms my still be energetic enough upon impacting the containment vessel to pit it or otherwise damage it, but absolute worse case scenario they do some damage to the super conductors and the vessel walls. There's basically no scenario in which containment failure leads to anything that the average person would describe as an explosion.

Now, what I would personally be worried about, and would be far more destructive is not a loss of containment, but some sort of catastrophic failure of the super conducting elements. Still probably not something anyone would worry about outside the facility, but it has a lot more potential to do damage that might conceivably hurt someone in the plant than something like loss of containment would.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#102
post #95
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't go to Iraq for oil, we went there so that more of our own money could be funneled from government coffers into politicians' bank accounts by way of defense contracts.

Even that goes too far. We're terrified of the fact that we live in an arational, incomprehensible world. It's a comforting fiction that some large conspiracy controls everything for the benefit of itself at the expense of everyone else, because at least that admits the possibility of control. And if societies can be controlled, at least in principle they can be fixed. Much scarier is the idea that power stumbles bli…

I didn't say that the entirety of society is under the control of a single cabal, only that the people in power at the time were able to exert enough influence in that instance to send the country into an unnecessary war so as to benefit themselves financially.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#103
post #99
post #55

Hate to be that guy, but how can a star in a bottle cost only ~105% of WhatsApp. One of them is incorrectly valued.

One is a cost, the other is a valuation -- two completely different things. A ditch can cost a million dollars to dig, but have a ~$0 valuation.

True, but on the other I hand it's simpler to say that I need $20B to buy ITER, $19B to buy WhatsApp, and $11B to buy the LHC. One of those things is not like the other.

I totally understand that I am cherry-picking here. There are many things in the world that are over- or under-valued when you compare their economic contribution to their societal contribution. I just thought this would be an interesting point to make on Hacker News.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#104
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The density is not that low, but the total amount of ultra-hot matter is pretty small." I'm sorry but I don't understand the distinction.

> I'm sorry but I don't understand the distinction. While its contained, the density is not that low; if it loses containment, the density will become low as it expands. At least, that's my understanding of the distinction here.

It's more about containing it within the walls of the container than within a very small subsection of the container. The whole thing will be at a pretty serious vacuum throughout operation.

I should probably disclaim: I worked on a Tokamak in undergrad.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#106
post #55

Hate to be that guy, but how can a star in a bottle cost only ~105% of WhatsApp. One of them is incorrectly valued.

Because there is no markup on the star in a bottle. They can build a trillion dollars of value - as the U.S. Government did when it created the Internet - and bill at cost. It will not even be recouped. It's billed to taxpayers. And that's why centralized governments are so great.

This is a roundabout way of saying that you are really looking at just the cost - what it takes to build this thing. Nobody is appreciating the value of it except the nations that signed up - and they're not selling a percentage.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#107
post #103
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is a cost, the other is a valuation -- two completely different things. A ditch can cost a million dollars to dig, but have a ~$0 valuation.

True, but on the other I hand it's simpler to say that I need $20B to buy ITER, $19B to buy WhatsApp, and $11B to buy the LHC. One of those things is not like the other. I totally understand that I am cherry-picking here. There are many things in the world that are over- or under-valued when you compare their economic contribution to their societal contribution. I just thought this would be an interesting point to ma…

> I need $20B to buy ITER, $19B to buy WhatsApp, and $11B to buy the LHC

No, you could say that it would cost you $20B to build a copy of ITER -- very different. You can't buy ITER for what was paid to build it. Or maybe you can. We have no idea because the valuation is unknown. The project is so risky, we're spreading the cost around 35 countries. If we thought it was more of a sure thing, every country would be trying to build their own. Many companies, too.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#108
post #95
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't go to Iraq for oil, we went there so that more of our own money could be funneled from government coffers into politicians' bank accounts by way of defense contracts.

Even that goes too far. We're terrified of the fact that we live in an arational, incomprehensible world. It's a comforting fiction that some large conspiracy controls everything for the benefit of itself at the expense of everyone else, because at least that admits the possibility of control. And if societies can be controlled, at least in principle they can be fixed. Much scarier is the idea that power stumbles bli…

Perhaps scarier and more accurate is the idea that it's done for a very good reason, but that we lack the context/intelligence to understand it as individuals. No one wants to be the organism in a superorganism.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#109
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the pyramids of Giza are a monument of human achievement that hasn't yet been surpassed. > [...] the last few centuries have completely and utterly surpassed that In terms of what they were built for, that is travel through time mostly unharmed for several thousands of years, a literal vessel of eternity, this claim is undebatably false. Few things we have built in the last two centuries will survive more than a de…

> It takes but a trip to Normandy to see german bunkers getting swallowed by nature. Or, especially for the SF Bay Area crowd, you could go to the Marin headlands and see US bunkers from the same era -- intended to defend against Japanese attack -- doing the same thing. Shorter trip.

We didn't expect the Japanese to wage a centuries-long war with us. They were made with a shortish fixed lifespan in mind. This is why they appear in disrepair. I imagine the Germans had the same calculus when they built theirs. But, yes, a they're good examples of things reverting to nature, slowly.

Re: A Star in a Bottle

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, what happens if the mechanisms that contain the "Star in a Bottle" fail? Will the French Alps suddenly and catastrophically acquire a new valley? This is a reasonable concern, but your intuitions on the physical processes involved are off by a couple orders of magnitude. From a previous comment on another fusion story, two years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2839722 Fusion reactors are fundamentally…

"a Yugo rear-ending a garbage truck in Brooklyn doesn't instantly consume all of New York City in a gasoline fireball." My new favorite metaphor.

I'd just like to point out that the Yugo metaphor is invalid because the article specifically states that the experiment involves "beams of uncharged particles — the energy in them so great it could vaporize a car in seconds".

So there.

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