Fusion Update

This looks more like an advertisement produced by Lockheed to excite investors than an actual report of the current state of progress by a factor of 3 to 4 orders of magnitude.

Just my read on this...

I'm excited to see the research being done by this team as well as others. I'm not saying they have it yet but it more than has my attention.

Pretty neat! The edge to the next generation

QUOTE: "Fusion is the process by which a gas is heated up and separated into its ions and electrons. When the ions get hot enough, they can overcome their mutual repulsion and collide, fusing together. When this happens, they release a lot of energy - about one million times more powerful than a chemical reaction and 3-4 times more powerful than a fission reaction."

Uh, and just WHERE does that initial HEAT come from that is needed to get the gas into ions and become excited?

RED-NECK ANALOGY: "The stick of dynamite is FREE, but the fuse & detontator cord cost a BILLION-dollars per inch...how much you want of this stuff?"

http://aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-detailsits here

Energy is added, usually by radio-frequency heating, and the gas breaks into ions and electrons, forming plasma

Don't waste your time explaining this to a redneck who can't be bothered googling it himself. Fusion basics is all out there on the Internet and has been for years. One need only look, provided one is sufficiently motivated.

"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."

Having the book...then READING the book...followed by UNDERSTANDING what was read are, sadly, all disjointed events for too many of todays readers.

It does sound somewhat primitive to depend on heat generated fusion when Rossi is selling his cold fusion power: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reactor-verified-by-third-party-researchers-seems-to-have-1-million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline.

I talk to physicists who insist the sun needed heat and gravity to get started. But that was "postulated in the 1920s" and we don't seem to have moved on with alternative 'postulations'. All the evidence of our instruments tells us that the star is an electric phenomenon. Just look at the corona. Look at Birkeland's terrella experiments. What is the solar wind if not moving charge carriers ie current?

Today (12 Nov) we will see Philae attempt landing on a very rocky-looking 'snowball'. We might even see a flash as it discharges to this charged body. ESA still believe they are seeing water, when it is probably HO (hydroxyl): combining -ve O from the rock and +ve H protons from solar wind. We shall see if comets fight back!

If that was really the panacea that it was claimed to be Nature and every other scholarly magazine would be clamoring all over it.

Cold Fusion is nothing more than a religion in the form of pathological science because there is only faith to keep it going.

In the end I predict that it will adorn the same wall as N-Rays.

Redneck reply: "Yew mean I'm gonna have ta READ sumpin' to unnerstan' this? Ferget it. I gots beer ta drink."

The all-caps sentence is meaningless verbal fluff.

This is way over my head, "The CFR is expected to have a beta limit ratio of one. "We should be able to go to 100% or beyond," he adds."

This must mean that Buzz Lightyear has joined the dream team.

"The beta of a plasma, symbolized by β, is the ratio of the plasma pressure (p = n k_B T) to the magnetic pressure (p_mag = B²/2μ₀). The term is commonly used in studies of the Sun and Earth's magnetic field, and in the field of fusion power designs.

In the fusion power field, plasma is often confined using large superconducting magnets that are very expensive. Since the temperature of the fuel scales with pressure, reactors attempt to reach the highest pressures possible. The costs of large magnets roughly scales like β^½. Therefore beta can be thought of as a ratio of money out to money in for a reactor, and beta can be thought of (very approximately) as an economic indicator of reactor efficiency. To make an economically useful reactor, betas better than 5% are needed.

The same term is also used when discussing the interactions of the solar wind with various magnetic fields. For example, the beta in the corona of the Sun is about 1%."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(plasma_physics)

They just need energygod on their team.

Focardi & Rosssi may be about to be eclipsed. Or maybe not.

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