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Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

npr.org

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Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#161

Post by dannypgh »

10feet wrote: post #144
wavesounds wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) founded by the University of California in 1952" [1]. My tax dollars paid for this research I should be able to read it. As far as YC is concerned AirBNB and Uber encourage people to break the law all the time, some rules are just stupid and outdated and don't make sense and should be broken. This is "Hacker"…

My tax dollars paid for that gun officer, so let me hold it. I mean, I agree with you, but this is a silly statement. Just because the government pays for something does not allow you access to it.

And that's a silly comparison. Copyright law already excludes work created by official duties of officers of the federal government from copyright.

That's not this work, but arguably the original motives and intent of the law is subverted if what's happening here is the government outsourcing the creation of the work to a third party.

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

I see no parallels to firearm possession.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#162

Post by javert »

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…

We could also tackle those fundamental world problems if we had about 100 Bill Gateses. But we don't, because of how much the government loots.

I'm not an anarchist, so I do believe there should be a government that provides military defense. I'm not a progressive, so I don't believe the government should try to loot people to try to solve other people's pet problems.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#163

Post by wtracy »

Ogre wrote: post #147
rglover wrote: post #72

Anybody else excited that one of the guys working on fusion power is named "Mr. Hurricane?"

I thought it was kind of hard to take the article seriously after that. I know it's the guy's real name, so I feel bad about this (as bad as I can feel for someone with an awesome name!), but it doesn't change that it sounds like something from a comic book. A fusion scientist named Omar Hurricane? Come on! Next thing we hear is there's been a horrible lab accident involving high powered lasers and lead scientist Oma…

Well, I once got email from a recruiter named Ponzi. I think that wins.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#164

Post by NatW »

lisper wrote: post #32
Kroem3r wrote: post #18

This is newsworthy despite "They didn't get more fusion power out than they put in with the laser"? After decades of work they are orders of magnitude away from break-even. Makes me wonder if the goal is actually break-even and/or power generation. Not really; but it's a revealing question. I'm no great fan of the budgets these huge projects pull down; I think the bang-for-the-buck is greater elsewhere. But modelling…

> 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’s a very important milestone achieved by a clever invention to harness the brute force better.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#165

Post by AnthonyMouse »

wcoenen wrote: post #62
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…

> we could probably solve some really fundamental world problems (i.e. energy, climate change) in the near future I have a feeling that if we had fusion plants providing limitless cheap power, we'd get back on an 8% yearly growth track for energy consumption, like with oil consumption before 1970. Then within a century or so, we'd be producing an amount of power equivalent to 20% of what the earth receives from the s…

> Then within a century or so, we'd be producing an amount of power equivalent to 20% of what the earth receives from the sun. It would give a whole new meaning to "global warming".

Assuming we don't use the new energy in significant part to colonize other planets, with the colonies representing a significant part of the growth in human energy consumption.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#166

Post by YokoZar »

dredmorbius wrote: post #160
YokoZar wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a tiny bit unreasonable to project continuous exponential growth in human energy usage on such a ridiculously long timescale. It's like arguing that Moore's law will continue for another 200 years.

However that growth is precisely what the present human civilization and economic system are predicated on. That growth will stop sometime and a considerable amount of present pain seems to be that global growth is slowing markedly (and has been since the 1970s). Globally, economic activity and energy consumption are still tightly correlated: http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1vlksg/economic...

Yes, and when you're a child your caloric intake and your yearly increase in height are very tightly correlated too. Lots of society is built around this growth, such as the expectation of having to buy bigger clothes every year. But even a child can understand that one day they will stop growing and eat approximately the same amount of food for the rest of their life.

It would be "strange" to argue that, as a teenager, you were doomed to a life of misery because in order to keep up with this so-far exponential growth rate you'd have to eat entire planets by the time you were 1000 years old. It is similarly bizarre to argue that human society is in some sort of trouble because we can only double our energy consumption a few dozen more times.

This isn't even bringing up economic concepts like diminishing returns to utility: a person who makes 100k per year does not spend twice as much energy as someone who makes 50k per year. There are plenty of other things to buy that make us happy, and that can only get even more true when we're living in some hypothetical future with hundreds of times the economic productivity of today.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#167

Post by dj-wonk »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #69
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not enough. Learning what doesn't work is sort of useful, but only if it ever leads to something that DOES work. There's an infinite supply of dead ends out there. You need a higher bar than 'learned something' if that something is a negative.

I'm not a scientist, but I am a programmer, and I find that learning new things is very often a process of eliminating dead ends through trial and error. That's how you narrow it down to the thing that actually does work. It sounds like you're saying "don't bother exploring dead ends, either do it right the first time or give up," which is a lot like saying "I just want a penthouse apartment, stop wasting time buildi…

Yes, I think what you are saying can work well for programming. But with certain scientific questions, there are many theories that could work. It isn't just a matter of ruling things out (though that helps too). One key part of the scientific process is generating a theoretical insight (perhaps) that lets you look at something in a new way. Another key part is figuring out how to test that idea.

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#169

Post by yen223 »

tptacek wrote: post #131
unepipe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not worth it. The terrorists won.

Or we could talk about nuclear fusion.

Why talk about what might be the biggest scientific breakthrough of the year, when we can regurgitate snarky comments about Elsevier again?

Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion

#170

Post by hobs »

leobelle wrote: post #107
gizmo686 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't protesting the law with civil disobedience, it is breaking the law because the direct expected value of breaking the law (people having access to this specific paper) is greater then the expected cost of breaking the law (~0).

Are you a psychopath? In what world does personal expected value versus expected cost of breaking the law ever become a good way to make moral decisions? If you have the chance to get a promotion by killing your boss but have near zero chance of being caught due to some circumstance, would you kill your boss? What the fuck.

Sometimes I think I would do it for no promotion.
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