48 seconds. I predict a glut of helium. balloons for everyone
Hotter than the surface of the sun by a factor of ~18000.
Hotter than the suns core by a factor of ~7.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/temperatures-across-our-solar-system/#hds-sidebar-nav-1
People talk about Icarus flying too close to the sun. Motherfuckers are recreating it in labs 😂
Hotter than yo mama …. Wait a minute
Just barely though…
People talk about Icarus flying too close to the sun. Motherfuckers are recreating it in labs
This!
That’s definitely some next-gen level magic being scienced/engineered.
And some mother fucking!
I just want to know what kind of thermometer they put into the plasma to measure the temperature. It must have been made of ice or something to not burn up.
The power of the sun, in the palm of my hand.
…Icarus was a primitive savage from ancient times…he didn’t have our cool cyberpunk tech
I’d love to see an operating fusion reactor in my lifetime. Real sci-fi technology
Currently reading news and communicating with people around the world from the privacy of my toilet using my hand terminal. It can also understand what I am saying and excecute my spoken commands (to some extent at least). That’s some Sci fi shit right there. Pun intended
It’s seriously insane growing up on star trek and then seeing it come to life.
Still holding out for flying cars.
And warp drive!
I don’t want flying cars because I don’t want 95% of the people around me to be driving regular cars. Can’t even use a turn signal and now they have carte blanche to drive over houses and shit?
The answer is mass transit. Mag-rail, not personal aviation.
Yeah, motherfuckers can’t even drive in two dimensions. Adding a third would be a clusterfuck of galactic proportions.
I’m waiting for the post-scarcity stuff 😭
The post-scarcity utopia only happens after the Eugenics Wars and that whole Khan thing, mind you…
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And warp drive!
I’d take a jump drive, if warp isn’t available.
Unfortunately the limiting factor on flying cars is the drivers. And the limiting factor on warp drive is the science not turning out to be a scam.
I could see AI at least solving the former.
Nice. Let’s use it for shit posting and spreading misinformation
Same is true for the printing press.
When will people understand that our tools are not the problem? It’s us!
Currently reading news and communicating with people around the world from the privacy of my toilet
That’s some Sci fi shit right there. Pun intended
Well played, sir/madam. Well, played.
really hoping ITER pulls it off or they make a new breakthrough design.
I am quite positive I’ll see reliable, sustained fusion reactions in my lifetime.
I’m also pretty positive it’ll be useless as an energy source. Still could be useful for other things though.
I’m also pretty positive it’ll be useless as an energy source.
Why? Honestly curious.
I don’t think we’ll get to the point where the energy that comes out will be higher enough than the energy put in to justify its use compared to other energy sources.
I don’t think we’ll get to the point where the energy that comes out will be higher enough than the energy put in to justify its use compared to other energy sources.
They also used to say Man will never fly.
Technically, just give it time. Politically, that’s a whole other matter.
They also used to say Man will never fly.
Sure… I’m not saying fusion will never happen (it already does of course) or even that it’ll never be net positive for energy.
Just that, for energy it’s looking to be worse than most other options.
So I’m not saying man will never fly, I’m saying something closer to flying cars won’t happen. It’s not that we couldn’t do it, just that the alternatives are better.
just that the alternatives are better.
I’m not sure how you can judge that, against something that doesn’t exist yet.
I’m not sure how you can judge that, against something that doesn’t exist yet.
Simply based on past and current trends. The advancement curve on fusion would need to really step it up and if we say that it can, then we also need to accept the same is possible for the alternatives which means fusion still lags behind.
Fusion would need to be extra special somehow, and from what’s happened so far, it seems less special than the rest if anything.
Naturally this is all speculative of course, and being wrong on this is great either way as one way or another we will continue to get better at getting energy.
Seems pretty useful to me, considering you only exist because of fusion.
I’m specifically referring to man-made fusion as an energy source… Otherwise essentially all of our energy sources could be called “fusion” since they all trace back to it in one way or another.
48 seconds at those temperatures is no joke, that is pretty amazing. I didn’t see the article elaborate on what the current limiting factors are for pushing beyond 48 seconds. Like I wonder if it’s a hard wall, a new engineering challenge, a tweak needed, etc. this is the reactor that set the last record so they are doing something really right.
(The article touches on this bit a little) I was watching something about fusion the other day and it seems that it is super tricky to keep the magnetic field balanced in a way that keeps the plasma in a proper toroid. Not only does it need to keep the correct strength, it has to fight against random turbulence. This is critical to start the reaction, but also to maintain it.
Also, they gave some other physical limitations in the article as well:
To extend their plasma’s burning time from the previous record-breaking run, the scientists tweaked aspects of their reactor’s design, including replacing carbon with tungsten to improve the efficiency of the tokamak’s “divertors,” which extract heat and ash from the reactor.
Basically, it’s the container that has limitations as containing a pseudo-sun probably isn’t easy.
According to another commenter the heat generated is 7 times that of the core of the sun. Considering we use the sun in sci fi to destroy anything that can’t be destroyed by other means, controlling that level of heat seems like a real challenge
Yeah. Actually using that heat is the next challenge, I suppose. If I am not mistaken (and I am often mistaken), they are not actually using the reaction to power the reactor yet.
It’s all math, basically. If they measure more energy coming out than they put in, it’s considered a win.
How would they use it to power a reactor? Is it like a regular nuclear reactor where you essentially boil water to power a steam turbine?
I swear a part of my inner child died the day I found out that nuclear reactors are essentially big kettles.
It’s likely going to create steam, just like a reactor today. It is a very effective way to turn a turbine for a generator, after all. All the bits that actually start and maintain the reaction need fuck tons of electricity, so the reaction can literally power itself when attached to a generator.
While there are a ton of formulas for converting energy from heat, to steam, to mechanical energy and then into electricity, it’s all basically the same: more power out than you put in is a good reaction.
Almost forgot, water is dual function. It cools the equipment and it acts as an energy transport. I believe ammonia is more efficient in some circumstances, but water is better for obvious reasons.
Yeah, I mean it makes sense. My inner child wants there to be some sort of magic that splits the atomic nucleus (or in the case of fusion… well you know) and harnesses the energy through some sort of fancy magical-to-us-commonfolk process.
Kettles are great, but not whimsical or fantastic.
How the heat is generated is still wicked-cool and is basically magic. Think about it this way: We are holding a toroid shaped micro-sun in place with magnets. Those magnets need to be adjusted hundreds of times a second to keep everything in its place. Sure, it just boils water, but how it boils water is where the real magic is.
We are building atoms by taking control of the core of a star.
Hot damn! Limitless fusion power is only thirty years away!
Breakthroughs will bring in investment and then things can accelerate if it ends up viable.
One step closer to getting the T-51s working.
One day we will break that record and nobody will ever know again.
Fusion triple product:
the duration the thing worksxinverse of how close you are to melting the reactor vesselxhow large is the reactor vesselI’d like to know more. How do you actually harness the energy produced by temperatures that high? Is the end goal to figure out how to sustain the reaction at lower temperatures or do we actually have ways to generate electricity from those temperatures without losing most of it to waste?
Steam turbines aren’t the only way, certain fuel cycles permit direct energy conversion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion
I think the current designs would all use radiation heat, which means infrared etc light hitting the reactor walls and a coolant (water) running through them to generate steam, and then it’s the good old turbine to electricity process… Light emitted from a plasma that hot isn’t that hot itself / wouldn’t heat reactor walls to the same temps.
Think of all the houses they could heat with that!
Can’t be good for our global warming problem, amirite?
The faster I get my steak the better
Soooo, we will all start sounding like Alvin and the Chipmunks soon?
Stage three: make everyone on earth sound like a freaked out anime character.
Success.
That doesn’t sound like cold fusion.
Where do you see it being called cold fusion anywhere?
Because it actually works?
We have a fusion reactor in the middle of our solar system solving the spicy half of the problem already. If we are having a solar heat capture problem, how is a new source of virtually unlimited power (and heat) here going to work? How is superconductivity coming along to help mitigate this?
Because the problem fusion reactors will solve isn’t free energy. We already have that, like you suggest. Solar, wind, geo thermal, hydro power, oceanic tide harvesting, and to a certain extent nuclear…all of that is free energy waiting to be harnessed.
The problems it solves include packaging (think footprint for a solar farm power plant), radio activity (like fission power plants), predictability ( solar, wind, etc), and location (hydro). Fusion puts clean power plants anywhere you want them, safely and reliably.
All of these allow you to advocate for a functioning power plant to governments and citizens without any drawbacks besides costs to build and maintain. It’s an easier sell than any other power in existence. It runs off of water.
We don’t have sufficient political will to use the sun. This hopefully provides an alternative.
