Wiki on fusion. "In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, nuclear fusion is the process by which multiple like-charged atomic nuclei join together to form a heavier nucleus. It is accompanied by the release or absorption of energy, which allows matter to enter a plasma state."

Plasma is also known to some as the 4th state of matter. It is ever present in fusion, though not limited to. Most discussions about plasma though involve stars by and large.

Before you know it they'll start making energy through nuclear fusion of atoms at conditions close to room temperature

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
>> ^dannym3141:
Isn't this a bit misleading? I mean, a feeding black hole would still be black in any format that we could define black or white within. Ie. eyesight. And even the radiation that does "emit" from a black hole which we may see with instrumentation comes from virtual particles around the event horizon.
So you'd see light swirling into the centre, but at the event horizon you'd see "black".
Right? Am i a nerd? Am i a wrong nerd? Cos that'd be even worse.

You're a right nerd
The black hole itself - the area inside the event horizon - would be black indeed. What we do see is light generated by the accretion disc: the matter swirling around the black hole, orbiting it in ever decreasing circles until it falls in. Now, as it circles, the material gets ferociously hot through friction, emitting visible light and x-rays and stuff. It's also under huge pressures, enough in many cases (maybe all, I don't remember) to initiate nuclear fusion, which of course will produce plenty of light and heat too.
The causes of the polar jets shown in the animation are complex and not fully understood, but they are composed of ejected matter from the accretion disc, not from the black hole itself. The virtual particle phenomenon you mentioned (as I'm sure you know) is called Hawking radiation. This is when pairs of virtual particles to come into being at the event horizon. In some cases one lucky particle out of a pair will be travelling in just the right way to fly off into space, while its partner falls into the hole. It would therefore seem to an observer that the black hole had emitted a particle. Groovy.


Hooray!

>> ^dannym3141:
Isn't this a bit misleading? I mean, a feeding black hole would still be black in any format that we could define black or white within. Ie. eyesight. And even the radiation that does "emit" from a black hole which we may see with instrumentation comes from virtual particles around the event horizon.
So you'd see light swirling into the centre, but at the event horizon you'd see "black".
Right? Am i a nerd? Am i a wrong nerd? Cos that'd be even worse.


You're a right nerd

The black hole itself - the area inside the event horizon - would be black indeed. What we do see is light generated by the accretion disc: the matter swirling around the black hole, orbiting it in ever decreasing circles until it falls in. Now, as it circles, the material gets ferociously hot through friction, emitting visible light and x-rays and stuff. It's also under huge pressures, enough in many cases (maybe all, I don't remember) to initiate nuclear fusion, which of course will produce plenty of light and heat too.

The causes of the polar jets shown in the animation are complex and not fully understood, but they are composed of ejected matter from the accretion disc, not from the black hole itself. The virtual particle phenomenon you mentioned (as I'm sure you know) is called Hawking radiation. This is when pairs of virtual particles to come into being at the event horizon. In some cases one lucky particle out of a pair will be travelling in just the right way to fly off into space, while its partner falls into the hole. It would therefore seem to an observer that the black hole had emitted a particle. Groovy.

>> ^nickreal03:
This should be what Obama's Manhattan Project/man on the moon project should be. I think is doable in less than ten years if people wanted to make it happen.

Not going to happen. The US is already involved in the ITER project and the earliest prediction for ITER is a commercial reactor by 2050. And that's IF nothing goes wrong.

Current research is still working towards achieving net gain, which is a far cry from practical fusion power. People have been promising fusion power "soon" since the 70s. The fact is we're not even close to starting research on commercial fusion, and we don't know if a practical fusion plant is even possible.

Our energy needs grows exponentially, and when and IF fusion power becomes available, it will already be too late. We NEED research on renewable fuels and alternative energy such as solar power to bridge that gap, and putting our hopes on a hail mary like fusion is only an invitation to disaster.

This is just way too dumbed down. "Not only is the sun the largest star in our solar system, it's the only one!" WTF

Is this correct?

The shear amount of mass that just makes up the sun is enough to cause that much pressure and heat to begin with because of the immense gravity having a role. If the sun were some significant amount less massive, it just wouldn't cut it.

Yep, that's correct. At the very core there are protons of hydrogen running around and in order for the sun to shine they need to get close enough together to fuse. (this nuclear fusion is the first step in the Proton - Proton chain reaction that converts hydrogen to helium). Since protons are positively charged they repel each other, so you need a lot of gravity to force them together, i.e. bigger sun. (They are repelled by the electromagnetic force and need to get close enough together that the strong nuclear force can take over and fuse them.)

Interestingly enough, the sun still isn't large enough to force them together, but it gets them close enough that quantum tunneling can take effect.

Look this stuff up and get into it. It's very rewarding and you'll be able to explain it to your kids.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'nuclear, fusion, tokamak, plasma, magnet' to 'nuclear, fusion, tokamak, plasma, magnet, scientific american' - edited by my15minutes

Holy fuck, KP! I would gladly give you a dozen star points for this alone, if I could. The 'comments' alone are gold.

This was my first sifted clip, and I still absolutely love it. The build-up to the momentous climax (ehehe) electrifies me every time I watch it, even now.

I miss gluonium, who left under bad circumstances, but I also wonder about other sifters (raven, mlx, crittter, oxdottir, to name a few) who just seemingly... disappeared?

Is there a creationist scientific claim that hasn't been blown out of the water? Or rather one that can actually be disproved. I know the common tactic is to say, oh gee the rate of radioactive decay used to be much faster hence why radiometric dating is wrong. Okay so it can't be disproven everything was in fast forward until 10 thousand years ago, but there's no basis for suspecting that's the case in the first place. I can submit that 400k years ago the sun was a giant heat and light radiating tomato, but its properties miraculously changed into that of one based off the nuclear fusion of hydrogen.

The biggest problem I have with teaching creationism in science class is that its a waste of time. Were it possible I wish there was enough time to explore every facet of creationism in a science class, to be able to pick it apart and have a lovely class room discussion about how it does or doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. But from my experience there isn't even enough time to glaze over scientific claims that have a mountain of supporting evidence. As a kid I'm not sure we ever actually got through our whole text book. Hell it seemed half the time was spent relearning what we supposedly didn't learn the previous year. Imagine how bad it would be if time were taken out to discuss every half baked scientific theory?

I suppose the creationists argue evolution (or Darwinism as they apparently like to call it) is a half baked theory. To that all I can say is the Majority of the scientific community seems to think its not, based on the evidence supporting it that has accrued since its inception.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/galex-20070815.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira

The simple answer is that it is a star.

Stars, like ours, emit radiation as a result of nuclear fusion. As it moves through space, the radiation creates a bow, where that radiation interacts with hydrogen. My guess is the hydrogen is excited to a higher energy state. When it decays, it emits the ultraviolet light that is whipped around the star in the shape of a tail.

You can't treat Mira with the same math and logic as a comet, because it produces its own energy.

Choggie, do you meet your requirements in A? Do you have a PhD?

It should be noted that S.E. Jones is a nuclear physicist- I.E. he does not satisfy A). He researched Cold Fusion in the late 80s,

· S.E. Jones, E.P. Palmer, J.B. Czirr, D.L. Decker, G.L. Jensen, J.M. Thorne, and S.F. Taylor & J. Rafelski, "Observation of Cold Nuclear Fusion in Condensed Matter," Nature 338

I encourage everyone to read the wikipedia entry on cold fusion:

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

However, based on your convictions, I encourage to do the following:
0. Gather some preliminary data.
1. Write a grant.
1.5. Hire a graduate student.
2. Publish your findings in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Would you agree that if a hypothesis can not be verified through experiment or theory, then it must be rejected? Can you point to a single peer-reviewed paper published in a scientific journal that supports your current opinion or the opinions expressed on this video? Could you send me that reference? Have you completely read the NIST report? Do you believe that NIST is a government agency where all the researchers are controlled by the government? If these researchers are controlled by the government, are they forced to have these opinions or are they hand picked so that they just never disagree with the Big Borther's agenda?

Recently, you voted for a video, where the speaker, one Jeff King, had a background which could not be verified. Yet he presented himself as a research scientist at MIT, and then spoke as though he had expertise in the areas which he freely discussed. How do you reconcile your condition that anyone who "pooh pooh's" this video must satisfy A), with the fact that you voted for that video?

Sincerely,

MH.

Strangely enough, we (meaning humanity) have just figured this out for ourselves... in our usual extreme style: http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/html4ever/2004/0400302.Taleyarkhan.fusion.html

I'm blown away by the fact that this crustacean has beaten us to this discovery but I'll give us humans the props for taking it to the level we have... that is, nuclear fusion in a bubble. woot.

This is important. It's long, but it's important. If you have the time to listen to Dr. Robert Bussard you will be convinced about clean, cheap power. It's available and it's now. We can do this.

Here's the back-story from Google's page:

Google Tech Talks November 9, 2006

ABSTRACT This is not your father's fusion reactor! Forget everything you know about conventional ... all » thinking on nuclear fusion: high-temperature plasmas, steam turbines, neutron radiation and even nuclear waste are a thing of the past. Goodbye thermonuclear fusion; hello inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IEC), an old idea that's been made new. While the international community debates the fate of the politically-turmoiled $12 billion ITER (an experimental thermonuclear reactor), simple IEC reactors are being built as high-school science fair projects.

Dr. Robert Bussard, former Asst. Director of the Atomic Energy Commission and founder of Energy Matter Conversion Corporation (EMC2), has spent 17 years perfecting IEC, a fusion process that converts hydrogen and boron directly into electricity producing helium as the only waste product. Most of this work was funded by the Department of Defense, the details of which have been under seal... until now.

Dr. Bussard will discuss his recent results and details of this potentially world-altering technology, whose conception dates back as far as 1924, and even includes a reactor design by Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor of the scanning television).

Can a 100 MW fusion reactor be built for less than Google's annual electricity bill? Come see what's possible when you think outside the thermonuclear box and ignore the herd.

Awesome! I'm especially pleased that this means there's another great podcast I can subscribe to.

I'd suggest taking nuclear, fusion and tokamak out of the tags (because a search will already find these words in the title) and add in "scientific american". It's one of those identifiers, like "TED talk" or "David Attenborough", that can get people's attention because they associate those names with quality.

Congratulations on getting your first published post -- NOW!