Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

en.people.cn

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 235 posts

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#81

Post by espadrine »

narrator wrote: post #33
ars wrote: post #3

It's unfortunate that it's like this, but I automatically do not believe any scientific breakthroughs that come from China. There has simply been too much fraud for me to believe anything they say. http://www.sciencealert.com/80-of-the-data-in-chinese-clinic...

There was a reddit AMA in 2011 where a guy went to China and got stem cell treatments for his paralysis[1] and could walk now. Nobody on Reddit believed him. They basically spent the whole AMA trying to tell him it didn't happen. Then America did it 2016 and everyone was like "The Future is here and we did it first!"[2]. No, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed, or maybe it's already happening…

We do tend to diminish achievements from Asia historically. They discovered America first (the whole notion of "discovering" first a place where there already are people is absurd), they got printing first, they mastered gunpowder first... and yet most westerners will name Columbus, Gutenberg, and Europe.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#82

Post by Annatar »

Compared to the stellerator, tokamak is an older design. Germans have sucessfully built and tested the second generation stellerator, Wendelstein 7-X[1]. Now it will run for 32 minutes, where the Tokamak design is targeted for 1000 seconds, or 16 minutes. (Yes, a stellerator is much harder to build, but it's easier to control the plasma with; building one became feasible only after doing finite element analysis optimizations.)

That they got the tokamak design to work is a testament to "when in doubt, use brute force" maxim by Ken Thompson. It shows what can be done when banging on something until it works, but I don't think it's the best way forward, because the stellerator design already works, is easier to control plasma with, and is now in its third revision.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#83

Post by rjzzleep »

Noseshine wrote: post #72
tn13 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. We need to see China creating something that is not a copy first.

You should google the history of the phrase "Made in Germany" (I'm German by the way) Quote ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany ): > The label was originally introduced in Britain by the Merchandise Marks Act 1887,[1] to mark foreign produce more obviously, as foreign manufactures had been falsely marking inferior goods with the marks of renowned British manufacturing companies and importing them into the…

I like to look at the discussion of wikipedia article. Note that the reference "[2]" is not pointing to oxford university press but rather to a spiegel article.

The actual act can be found here [1].

"With regard to direct false indications of origin the matter is simple enough. If knives are imported marked Sheffield when they have been manufactured in Germany, it will be evident that a fraud has been committed."

"But in the case of indirect indications of origin the matter is not so simple. The use of the English language in descriptive expressions such as "superfine make" on a label applied to goods coming from a foreign-speaking country is undoubtedly, under the ACt a false indication of manufacture"

"In addition to these indications of British manufacture, there are many other wordsused on goods in other languages which might be false or not according to the country from which they are imported. Such words, for instance, as "Mode de Paris,""

In other words, the focus of that act was not things that have been intentionally mislabeled, but rather the junk that people nowadays consider hip combined with the fact that people probably knew even less foreign languages back then than they do now. But anyway I guess it's a matter of opinion whether you take an interpretation of the original text or someones understanding of the understanding of someones thesis.

[1] https://archive.org/stream/merchandisemark00payngoog#page/n2...

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#84

Post by kybernetikos »

I would love to see a huge effort towards fusion, on the same (or even greater) scale as the Manhattan project or the Apollo program. I had been disappointed in the way that fusion always seemed to be 30 years away no matter how many years went past, but I just assumed that that was because the science was hard and just the way it had to be.

https://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg

https://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Winter_...

In 1976, a number of plans for investing in fusion were described, and what actually happened was that less was invested in fusion even than the level at which the program plan predicted we would never achieve fusion. This is the kind of thing that anyone who cares about humanity in general should find upsetting.

Massively abundant, cheap, clean energy should be one of humanity's top priorities.

Working, economic fusion power has a chance to revolutionize life as we know it. The countries that have access to the technology first will be at the forefront of a huge economic, social, cultural, scientific change.

It's more important than going to Mars (and would probably make going to Mars significantly easier). It's more important than nearly anything we're working on.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#85

Post by TeMPOraL »

espadrine wrote: post #81
narrator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a reddit AMA in 2011 where a guy went to China and got stem cell treatments for his paralysis[1] and could walk now. Nobody on Reddit believed him. They basically spent the whole AMA trying to tell him it didn't happen. Then America did it 2016 and everyone was like "The Future is here and we did it first!"[2]. No, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed, or maybe it's already happening…

We do tend to diminish achievements from Asia historically. They discovered America first (the whole notion of "discovering" first a place where there already are people is absurd), they got printing first, they mastered gunpowder first... and yet most westerners will name Columbus, Gutenberg, and Europe.

They mastered basic rocketry even before Europe got proficient with gunpowder...

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#86

Post by danpalmer »

espadrine wrote: post #81
narrator wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a reddit AMA in 2011 where a guy went to China and got stem cell treatments for his paralysis[1] and could walk now. Nobody on Reddit believed him. They basically spent the whole AMA trying to tell him it didn't happen. Then America did it 2016 and everyone was like "The Future is here and we did it first!"[2]. No, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed, or maybe it's already happening…

We do tend to diminish achievements from Asia historically. They discovered America first (the whole notion of "discovering" first a place where there already are people is absurd), they got printing first, they mastered gunpowder first... and yet most westerners will name Columbus, Gutenberg, and Europe.

If you're basing the claim that they discovered America first on the book 1421 (which many people do) then you should know it's generally considered to be very poor quality historical research by most historians.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#87

Post by kodroid »

kybernetikos wrote: post #84

I would love to see a huge effort towards fusion, on the same (or even greater) scale as the Manhattan project or the Apollo program. I had been disappointed in the way that fusion always seemed to be 30 years away no matter how many years went past, but I just assumed that that was because the science was hard and just the way it had to be. https://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg https://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Article…

Lets do a fusion kickstarter. All reward levels can be "carbon free energy".

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#88

Post by simonh »

The Manhattan Project cost about $26bn in 2016 dollars, while ITER is expected to cost over $20bn by the time it's done.

The problem with trying to solve something like this by throwing money at it too early, is what if the technological approach chosen doesn't work out? The more money you put into it, the more you would waste. Right now there at least half a dozen possible ways Fusion could be achieved commercially, but we don't know which one(s) will pan out. Even then, to be viable some of them may require the development of enabling technologies we haven't even thought of yet. So yes they are worth pursuing, but on the basis of a measured assessment of cost and benefit.

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#89

Post by oelmekki »

djsumdog wrote: post #4

Anyone remember that really old game Outpost? It ran on Windows 3.1; used a CD recording of The Planets as its soundtrack. That's the first time I've heard of Tokamak reactors. What these are trying to achieve is pretty amazing. I hope one day, one of these reactors will be able to sustain a greater output than input. It has the potential to move the planet into a completely different energy age. Imagine if we could…

Funny, the picture instantly reminded me of the Shinra and its reactors in Final Fantaisy VII :) [1]

Regarding Mars, I would love someone who knows to tell us how this would compare to raw sun energy exploitation. Each time I think of solar energy, I can't help but think it's a waste to try to collect it under the atmosphere, given one of its useful properties is precisely to protect us from the sun. My thinking usually then go into thinking a solar farm would be way more efficient in space, or on Mars. Could someone debunk or confirm this?

[1] http://www.playersc.com/midgar_big.gif

Re: China’s ‘Artificial Sun’ achieves fusion breakthrough

#90

Post by kybernetikos »

simonh wrote: post #88

The Manhattan Project cost about $26bn in 2016 dollars, while ITER is expected to cost over $20bn by the time it's done. The problem with trying to solve something like this by throwing money at it too early, is what if the technological approach chosen doesn't work out? The more money you put into it, the more you would waste. Right now there at least half a dozen possible ways Fusion could be achieved commercially,…

The Manhattan project took place over about 5 years. The US has been investigating fusion since at least the 40s.

ITER is also an international effort, funded by 36 countries, not just the US. The US also withdrew from funding it for 6 years in 2000 so I don't know what its total involvement will be, but so far it will be well short of its involvement in the Manhattan project.

I agree that the money that should be invested in fusion shouldn't all be spent on a single approach though.

Post reply on HN