This is a clip from "Can we make a star on earth"

Here's another good video regarding this laser.

...and here's another NIF video.

*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Sunday, December 12th, 2010 1:29pm PST - promote requested by eric3579.

They actually reached the theoretical laser limit, I believe, not to long ago. Light is essentially energy. Energy is essentially matter. Focus enough energy to a point, and it turns to matter. This effect destroys your vacuum causing your laser to lose the ability to be a laser. Really neat stuff, but it basically means that all lasers have a limit in power, so killer death beams might never be an actuality

i know i'm not a scientist, but "limits" have been proven incorrect many times before. So let's not give up on a death star just yet

Fun facts for the scientifically casual:

Up until recently I had only heard about fusion occasionally, and always as if it had never been accomplished. It turns out that scientists in laboratories have produced nuclear fusion using a verity of methods for over 50 years, and have made fusion devices as small as a loaf of bread. The real quest is not JUST fusion but the sort of fusion that produces more energy than was put into the system. And producing a net gain of energy is what "Ignition" means in this case. Unlike formerly proven methods, they're trying to fuse hydrogen, which is the same fuel used by stars like our sun.

Where to find a shark big enough to carry this on its head...

Just for you...
http://videosift.com/video/Megashark-vs-Giant-Octopus

>> ^gwiz665:

Where to find a shark big enough to carry this on its head...

Awesome. Anybody know who pays for this kind of facility?

Is that Black Mesa?

Normally it comes out of the science budget of the owning country. Though in this case, the Department of Energy are involved, so maybe they stumped up some of the cash.>> ^RhesusMonk:

Awesome. Anybody know who pays for this kind of facility?

That's not a moon, it's a space station!

I know this is cool... but the "Why" escapes me.

What's the point?

"Stars" are enormous balls of ignited fuel. Spending huge amounts of tax payer money to concentrate sufficient energy to reach ignition gains us what? An achievement badge on Xbox live? then what? you have to keep the lasers on to sustain any reaction?

Nuclear Fusion is only useful if it produces more energy than it takes to create it.

I guess maybe they hope to be able to start a self-sustained reaction?

Without destroying reality in the process?

What the fuck do I know, IT'S ROCKET SCIENCE.

That's exactly the point. We know that nuclear fusion can give off VAST amounts of energy, but it's harnassing that energy and converting it to electricity that is the key. Every scientist knows that nuclear fusion is a holy grail, and solving it would solve the planet's energy requirements forever.>> ^raverman:

I know this is cool... but the "Why" escapes me.
What's the point?
"Stars" are enormous balls of ignited fuel. Spending huge amounts of tax payer money to concentrate sufficient energy to reach ignition gains us what? An achievement badge on Xbox live? then what? you have to keep the lasers on to sustain any reaction?
Nuclear Fusion is only useful if it produces more energy than it takes to create it.

>> ^Hybrid:

That's exactly the point. We know that nuclear fusion can give off VAST amounts of energy, but it's harnassing that energy and converting it to electricity that is the key. Every scientist knows that nuclear fusion is a holy grail, and solving it would solve the planet's energy requirements forever.>> ^raverman:
I know this is cool... but the "Why" escapes me.
What's the point?
"Stars" are enormous balls of ignited fuel. Spending huge amounts of tax payer money to concentrate sufficient energy to reach ignition gains us what? An achievement badge on Xbox live? then what? you have to keep the lasers on to sustain any reaction?
Nuclear Fusion is only useful if it produces more energy than it takes to create it.



Personally, I think a better way to go is turning every house into a power station. The bit torrent model if you will. If every house had a freeish energy generating ability, like cheap wind or solar cells, contained via some off the shelf hydrogen conversion storage unit, it would make for a much more self sufficient existence, and one with MUCH MUCH more redundancy than a central grid. My hope for the future is less the monolithic, single high power, power station, but the multitude of many small, low yield power stations. I think, like bit torrent, the sum will end up being more than the whole of its parts. (but fusion is still awesome

"uh...it's probably not a problem... Probably. But I'm showing a small discrepancy. Well...no, it's well within acceptable bounds here. Sustaining sequence."

"Go ahead, Gordon. Slump the carrier into the analysis port."

Why? Because you have to spend money* to make money*.

* money <-> energy
>> ^raverman:

I know this is cool... but the "Why" escapes me.
What's the point?
"Stars" are enormous balls of ignited fuel. Spending huge amounts of tax payer money to concentrate sufficient energy to reach ignition gains us what? An achievement badge on Xbox live? then what? you have to keep the lasers on to sustain any reaction?
Nuclear Fusion is only useful if it produces more energy than it takes to create it.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Personally, I think a better way to go is turning every house into a power station. The bit torrent model if you will. If every house had a freeish energy generating ability, like cheap wind or solar cells, contained via some off the shelf hydrogen conversion storage unit, it would make for a much more self sufficient existence, and one with MUCH MUCH more redundancy than a central grid. My hope for the future is less the monolithic, single high power, power station, but the multitude of many small, low yield power stations. I think, like bit torrent, the sum will end up being more than the whole of its parts. (but fusion is still awesome

Whilst i understand what you're trying to say, nuclear fusion is more energy than you can possibly imagine if you don't understand how it works. It's like melting an ice cube and getting a lake's worth of water out of it. And it can be done using materials like water which we're in abundance of on this planet.

Forget putting up loads of windmills and solar cells, if you crack fusion then you crack every energy need we will ever have, ever. You can then start seriously talking about using electrical cars because the energy is essentially free, electricity would (should, but we know what energy companies are like) become so abundant that it's virtually worthless.

Not to even mention that if we can REALLY solve it - we're talking long term, or elegantly simple and small and easy - then you can use it on a moon base, space stations, space ships, you name it.

There literally is no better payoff than fusion for waste vs. benefit.

[redacted]

McBoinkens: think of hydrogen as having potential nuclear energy. In the same way that wood or paper has chemical energy, i.e.

C + O2 + activation threshold energy --> CO2 + additional energy given off

then, from a nuclear perspective,

H + H + activation threshold energy --> Helium + additional energy given off.

but in this case, the element hydrogen becomes helium not by changing or sharing electrons but by jamming two nuclei into one atom.

All elements have potential nuclear energy and if you pump energy in they get closer to iron on the periodic table. Higher-level elements give off additional energy when they undergo fission (e.g. uranium in power plants). Lower-level elements give off additional energy when they undergo fusion (e.g. hydrogen in a hydrogen bomb).

The only thing that you have to do is provide sufficient energy to overcome the threshold. That can be a very big amount, but if you harness it, you can use it to keep the process going in the same way that you can use a pile of wood to keep a campfire going because it generates its own heat. The sun essentially works like this.

Perhaps my analogy led you astray, you don't get something out of nothing.

In fusion, a small amount of matter is converted directly into energy. It's a scientific theory that matter is energy, and in a small amount of matter there is a very large amount of energy.

For example, the sun is a nuclear fusion reactor. If it was burning chemically rather than fusing, it would have probably burnt out within a few thousand years (i've not bothered to do any maths on that). As it's fusing, it's probably got another 5 billion in it with 5 billion candles already on its birthday cake now.

If you burn a piece of wood, you get a certain amount of energy from it. If you converted a piece of wood directly from matter into energy, you'd get a rediculous amount of energy. Ice cube to a lake kind of proportions.

If you want to learn about fusion (it is interesting) then i suggest starting at the wikipedia page on it. It will explain that when you fuse two atoms together, you end up with something with less mass than its component parts, the mass lost is converted to energy (e=mc^2).

Read the second half of this about burning fuel. You get a feel for the numbers.
http://www.1728.com/einstein.htm

This may help a bit. I recommend watching this if you want to understand how fusion works.

*future *geek

Adding video to channels (Future, Geek) - requested by maatc.

Star seed... ew.

The ability to generate limitless fusion power is insignificant, next to the magical powers of Jesus.

*dead

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