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The Department of Energy had a press conference about achieving Nuclear Fusion with a net positive gain. The presentation and all the media coverage leaves a lot of the details out of course. Mainly the reality of the issue, which is that this an achievement, but also just an experiment. It’s great, but just felt that it’s all misrepresented from a “political” angle.
Quote from the Nature article below:
“However, while the fusion reactions may have produced more than 3 megajoules of energy — more than was delivered to the target — NIF’s 192 lasers consumed 322 megajoules of energy in the process.”
This is not a breakthrough from one of the more practical concept reactors that could be used to actually generate electricity. For example, the types that use a Plasma and special walls that capture the energy as heat. The scarce Tritium, part of the fuel used in this experiment, is created by these other reactors.
Watch this Real Engineering video from 2 days before on the the issues with the fuel isotopes
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to Ricardo)
Yep I follow her too! Looking forward to her reaction. I roll my eyes at the usual experts like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye The Science Guy, and Michio Kaku as the experts everything physics.
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Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to JasonM)
quote:
I roll my eyes at the usual experts like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye The Science Guy, and Michio Kaku as the experts everything physics.
I'm with you on that, Jason. Remember back in December 2015, we had a thread entitled "Alien Megastructure Discovered?" which was in response to an interview with Michio Kaku, in which he breathlessly declared that the phenomenon "could be the biggest story in 500 years, since Columbus's discovery of America...."
Here's my response to that interview.
It would be interesting to speculate on and investigate the cause of this phenomenon without the linguistically-challenged interviewer and the over-the-top hype of Michio Kaku. Kaku first states it could be the biggest story in 500 years, since Columbus's discovery of America or it could be the biggest wild goose chase of all time, like the Loch Ness Monster. The interviewer then burbles: "OK, you have given us a huge dichotomy of possibilities," when she really means a "huge range of possibilities." She doesn't understand that a dichotomy means two possibilities, options, or lines of thought. No doubt she studied journalism instead of English or History.
When the interviewer points out that the phenomenon was first noticed in 2009, she asks Kaku why it is just being announced publicly in October 2015? Kaku replies by quoting Carl Sagan: "Because when remarkable claims are made, they require remarkable proof," while offering no proof whatsoever to substantiate the possibility of an "advanced alien civilization" or any other explanation. This phenomenon may well defy all normal cosmological explanations, but that does not mean there is not one out there. While the entire interview was wrapped around the "advanced civilization" hypothesis, it seems to me that that should be the last possibility to pursue at this point. "Reality" TV masquerading as science.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to BarkellWH)
quote:
No doubt she studied journalism instead of English or History.
or “Communication ”. Kaku, and now Avi Loeb, have definitely carved out a niche for themselves and boosted their notoriety. Benefits of tenure I suppose.
Back to Sabine, God bless this Women! She made an entire video about how deceitful the Fusion research community is with their numbers. Apparently I watched this last year but didn’t remember, because it pushed my subconscious hot button when I saw the recent news lol. Guess it is just a secret way to get funding dollars after all and build giant lasers!
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Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to JasonM)
quote:
Avi Loeb
While I assumed Avi Loeb was your typical Von Daniken “scientist” due to the news hype of oumoua moo moo or whatever it was, it was something Sabine recently said about it that intrigued me…she said scientists have shown that it was a broken piece of nitrogen asteroid, or something like that that did not make any sense to me so I decided it sounded too fishy so I looked him up. IN all honesty the guy seems to be doing good science, and all he is doing is pushing back because how the community jumped at his throat at the insinuation he made. First of all he has been collecting data on interstellar object trajectories that are absolutely correct, no one refutes it. Next this moo moo thing had done the typical gravity whip thing…however, in order for it to have accelerated, the material needed to be producing a comet tail that gives it that extra push. It had not tail which is the strange thing. The only thing that could do that naturally, is a chunk of solid HYDROGEN, and it seems the scientists that refute his hypothesis suggest this to explain it, which Loeb finds ridiculous for a number of reasons, mainly, solid hydrogen chunks have never been observed . The other curious thing is that the light spectrum was dip and bright at a huge percentage, way more than anything seen such as asteroids, comets, or chunks of them. It suggested an odd but specific shape….not the cigar as depicted in the media but a disc with flat hugely reflective surface, and then very thin sideways, that is tumbling. None of this data is refuted, so in addition to the unusual acceleration, the odd shape is assumed coincidental of this “chunk” of hydrogen as well.
He made a great analogy that a similar object was observed behaving the exact same way, yet came from inside our solar system and was much slower. It reflected light in a similar manner and accelerated via the photon push on the reflective surface, no tail, etc….it turned out they tracked it down and it was one of our own rocket booster stages that was floating out there for years. So he felt this moo moo thing was of similar type of tumbling shiny object, yet, it was interstellar (outside of our solar system). So his argument was always that more data needs to be collected on this type of objects (because they are fast, more prep is needed) with interstellar trajectories as this one was a missed opportunity that the community wanted to ignore. The push back from the community on this and some other intriguing targets has made him push back himself at what he considers deliberate (scientists going out of their way to suggest natural explanations of phenomena never seen before, only because they are “natural” and possible, though not probable).
So I would suggest checking the data and listen to the guy’s opinions, he is not your typical nut. His team acquired data from Pentagon that an interstellar sourced object landed on earth not far from shore and they are gonna check it out. Obviously they are looking for materials that might be magnetic that would not be naturally occurring. Time will tell.
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to Ricardo)
Avi Loeb - Actually I agree with you, I don’t think he is a quack at all, and did hesitate to put him in the same sentence with Kaku. What I mean is that Avi, having the stature of a Harvard professor, did suggest that moo moo could be of non human intelligent design, and then after that wrote a whole book about it. He went against the community and made a name for himself because of all the attention. Now he has funding for the Galileo Project. I don’t necessarily fault the guy for doing it because like you said, he’s not just some delusional scientist it seems. And it takes cajones. Also, I’m coming out of the closet to say that I follow a lot of this topic myself! We need more resources on it and do away with the stigma.
Kaku on the other hand, jve never followed his research. I just know that he is a string theorist that will put this weight behind anything the TV will pay him it seems
Posts: 15316
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to JasonM)
I was ready for Kaku to get ripped to shreds in this debate, but he actually holds his own, especially when it comes to experimental ideas in the near future, and simulations.
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to JasonM)
Sabine is doing an amazing work, I've been also following her for a long time and I'm glad her audience is really growing. Remembered her video that is linked on the top the moment I heard the "breakthrough" news.
I've read Kaku's name above and wanted to link the debate video, but Ricardo already did it. There are a few sweet spots where Roger Penrose and Sabine roll their eyes lol. I think Sir Roger Penrose is quite a gentleman, he was so decent in his arguments against obvious bs by Kaku.
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to Filip)
That’s funny I thought the same thing about Kaku in that debate! I was impressed. Penrose is like eh, whatever nobody is changing anyones mind here.
Another guy I follow is Sean Carroll. He’s now a professor at Johns Hopkins. Since I’m only 10 minutes away I’m thinking about going to one of his colloquium talks there. There’s one in Feb https://www.jhuapl.edu/colloquium/Archive/Detail?colloqid=2936
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to JasonM)
quote:
Another guy I follow is Sean Carroll. He’s now a professor at Johns Hopkins.
I did not know Sean Carroll is at John Hopkins now. Around 10 years ago when I first got interested more deeply into physics (story of how and why below :) ) he was at Caltech and I followed his blog which was at the Cosmic Variance at the time. At some point I stopped following all these people including SC. I've seen recently that some ppl were criticising him for his recent tweets about biology of sex.
Ricardo, thanks a lot for the link, haven't seen that one!
P.S. So, many years ago there was this news story about faster than light neutrinos from CERN or another lab nearby, can't really remember. It was a hot topic and the coverage seemed quite down to earth to me (it was something along these lines...hey we have this result in the lab, we were checking it, it's crazy and we don't know what to make of it, please help). And then there was a video of Kaku on Bigthink saying that we will have to redefine physics and that Einsteins theory of relativity will be dead if the result holds. My high school knowledge was like wtf. I knew about Kaku before that as a physics personality but was puzzled by what he said. Then I decided to dig it and follow more people/blogs, and this is how I found out about SC, Cosmic Variance, Quantum Diaries, etc...So in a way, it was Kaku that made me search for better info and want to understand the things better.
Posts: 3470
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to Filip)
quote:
And then there was a video of Kaku on Bigthink saying that we will have to redefine physics and that Einsteins theory of relativity will be dead if the result holds.
Placing Kaku in the same sentence as "Bigthink" is a contradiction in terms. Kaku is hard to take seriously with statements like that cited above. And the one I cited in the "Alien Megastructure Discovered?" thread: "Kaku first states it could be the biggest story in 500 years, since Columbus's discovery of America or it could be the biggest wild goose chase of all time, like the Loch Ness Monster."
His childish inclination to abandon skepticism and prattle on about the least likely possibility doesn't demonstrate maturity or adherence to the scientific method. He's not quite a fraud, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him flogging crypto-currency.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to Filip)
In that debate, Alan had to pull out the “I did some pre research on your papers and critics…” thing, and Penrose is like Aww whoa I thought this was just a YouTube podcast show man, not running for office here! I still don’t fully understand Roger’s Cyclic theory - It’s more developed than I originally thought it seems. or the actual data on the Hawking spots. Statistically significant? Or random?
Filip, ha good story and reason to dig for the truth yourself! Sean C … I was surprised myself to learn that he moved from Caltech to Hopkins! I’m not necessarily into his many worlds interpretation, nor am I a believer of the wave function collapse, who knows!
Posts: 15316
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to JasonM)
quote:
ORIGINAL: JasonM
In that debate, Alan had to pull out the “I did some pre research on your papers and critics…” thing, and Penrose is like Aww whoa I thought this was just a YouTube podcast show man, not running for office here! I still don’t fully understand Roger’s Cyclic theory - It’s more developed than I originally thought it seems. or the actual data on the Hawking spots. Statistically significant? Or random?
It has to do with the infinite repeating scale like the Mandelbrot infinite zoom in, or the Escher art he mentions being personally involved in. It is very abstract, however, thinking about Planck limits and Entropy, you end up with these bizarre “two sides of the same coin” indistinguishable situations that are otherwise abstract and weird and probably not real. It means that our universe “eon” is ridiculous tiny by comparison to the previous, however, it is not fair to compare them that way.
By contrast Guth’s thing certainly explains a lot, however, it doesn’t make sense either as it seems to imply the boundary of the universe, whatever that might be, is unique compared to what it contains….otherwise we should see inflating regions all over the place INSIDE our universe all the time….and the magic “thing” that inflates the tiny region, (a variable or changing cosmological constant of anti gravity) has no basis either, and Roger’s main problem after all. I have often thought the observation of supernovae 1998 that implies accelerated expansion of the voids outlined by gravity cluster filaments, might relate to Inflation…yet I never hear about such a connection so I assume it has been looked at and it is wrong or there is no correlation. My idea is that after a certain size this acceleration or inflation kicks in, it happened at Planck length and then it happens again when the voids reach some diameter between galaxies that are otherwise sticking together. So since this obvious thing is never mentioned I am assuming there is no mathematical relationship there…but again the nature of this mechanism has no basis (in either situation).
The supernovae results might not be accurate either…I pointed out somewhere that type 1A have been called into question as standard candles (there might not be any dark energy). So, anyway, back to Roger, well, he has this wacky idea and they predict the Hawking points and circles in a very specific way, which apparently the CMB data actually shows, and is not refuted by Guth etc. It is just that Inflation, which never made this prediction, already sort of accounts for that evidence. In a similar way that string theory accounts for things predicted by other theories, I feel the inflation model in this case, is trying to hold on for other reasons than the issue presented. Roger doesn’t get why they are trying to push statistics or coincidence, onto something they never predicted before, yet HE IS PREDICTING NOW, and there it is. It is a problem for sure. Roger now has to develop the thing fully so that it can show How it explains all the rest that Inflation handles (a tall order), otherwise they will continue to sit back and claim this statistical coincidence. Also notice that they are point to the rings and not the Hawking points that Roger feels are a separate issue.
RE: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough (in reply to JasonM)
Michio Kaku is a noodle brained sensationalist even though is a scientist of sorts. His books are whack tabs he’s got a lot of bad ideas about early childhood development.
However, I don’t place Bill Nye or Tyson in the same boat and Kaku. Nye is a pragmatic materials engineer and he doesn’t talk BS about the subjects he knows. Dr. Tyson isn’t a lightweight either, but he’s an educator, not a practicing researcher. He also pragmatically debunks over the top claims in instances like this when the popular media runs away with a science story.
The same with Ira Flato of Science Friday, they all ask the questions that separate fantasy from real science. Kaku is the one who is speculatively indulgent.
Dr. Tyson especially is a stringent de-bunker, after all he and a few colleagues were the ones who reclassified Pluto from planet to big ice rock. And that made little kids cry.