fusion

Chris Knight's avatar

Previous attempts at harnessing the power of fusion reactions have involved containing plasma within a magnetic bottle. Now comes word of a radical new approach thunked-up by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The new method takes a massive levitating magnet and causing the plasma to flow around it.

If further experiments continue to bear good results, it could prove to be a much-needed breakthrough in the longstanding effort to produce cheap, clean fusion energy.

From the article…

A new experiment that reproduces the magnetic fields of the Earth and other planets has yielded its first significant results. The findings confirm that its unique approach has some potential to be developed as a new way of creating a power-producing plant based on nuclear fusion — the process that generates the sun’s prodigious output of energy.

Fusion has been a cherished goal of physicists and energy researchers for more than 50

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Chris Knight's avatar

General Fusion, a new company based out of Burnaby, British Columbia in Canada, has raised almost $14 million in funding to research what is being called an ambitious effort to create viable nuclear fusion. General Fusion believes it can engineer a reactor that uses 220 pneumatic pistons to generate acoustical waves that will be aimed at a plasma target, which will theoretically create a burst of fusion energy. Experts in the field believe that General Fusion might stand a chance of succeeding with their wild design, where countless others over the decades have failed.

Looks interesting. It also looks like the “Fat Man” nuclear bomb had Henry Ford engineered it 😛...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Twenty years after the infamous Pons/Fleishmann experiment (debate still rages on whether or not it actually worked) there is now substantial new evidence that “cold fusion” is a reality. At the 237th national meeting of the American Chemical Society which is going on now, researchers will be presenting date indicating that neutrons, excessive heat, X-rays, and tritium (a fusion by-product) were produced at room temperatures. Fusion has traditionally been thought only possible in environments of tremendous heat (like, say, the Sun, which is powered by fusion reactions involving hydrogen).

If this new research bears out and scientists can discover how cold fusion works, that might be a very large step toward potentially cheap and renewable energy.

(And I think now’s a good opportunity for some smart entrepreneur to trademark the “Mr. Fusion” brand 🙂...

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