161–170 of 1001 posts
Every breakthroughs starts from government (people) funded initiatives, congrats to everyone involved, a future without the need to generate selfish profit is at reach!
Every breakthrough starts from government funded initiatives? Wilbur and Orville Wright disagree.
Calling this "ignition" is a misnomer. The correct term, as given in the article (as opposed to the headline) is exceeding breakeven: more fusion energy output than energy input to the target. "Ignition" means the reaction becomes self-sustaining and does not require any further input of energy to continue.
Here's your most exciting paragraph > LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE). Many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable IFE to power homes and busines…
In the presentation they mentioned they couldn't reproduce the results immediately due to the containment imperfections -- at least that was my understanding.
> LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE) Yesterday, everyone was complaining about the 2.2:2.0 ratio, but now we're working with 3.15:2.05. With modern lasers, that'd be a total Q of 0.375 assuming 100% ef…
This is a stupid question but I don't know anything about fusion: How is it possible for X energy to create X+Y energy in output? Doesn't that violate some fundamental law of physics?
2.01410177811 u + 3.01604928 u = 5.03015105811 u
4.002602 u + 1.008 u = 5.010602 u
5.03015105811 u - 5.010602 u = 0.01954905811 u
That's an important piece of information - the thing is gigantic!
I hate to ask this, but have to ... is there any danger of these discoveries being weaponized easily by hostile countries? i.e. does this make unconventional weapons more accessible to countries who otherwise have embargoes on technology and material to make atomic weapons?
Fusion bombs (H bombs) have existed for a long time.
and their yield can be made arbitrarily large with designs perfected in the 50s. I don't see this tech contributing to weapons. ...well maybe the lasers i guess but not the fusion at least.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Q needs to be something like 500 to 1000, not because of energy breakeven, but to produce enough energy that the shot is financially positive. The amount of fusion energy produced in this shot is worth a penny or two. (And even then, it's dubious a laser fusion scheme will be competitive with other energy sources.)
Offset the financial viability with the cost of freedom from energy reliance and the need (more like craving) for military interventions
If ignition was achieved, why would they have to keep on shooting more fuel pellets? Shouldn't they just ignite one fuel pellet and feed in more fuel?