OT: AKB: Is Nuclear Fusion a Real Possibility?

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Oct 7, 2021
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I'm waiting for the clothes to dry, so thought I'd point out a curious fact about prime and composite (meaning, not prime) integers.

Euclid has a proof that if A is a finite set of prime numbers, then there is some prime p larger than every prime in A. It is a simple step beyond this to prove that there are infinitely many prime numbers.

Here's the thing: pick some positive integer N, as large as you like. There then exists some sequence of N consecutive composite integers (like 8, 9, 10 are three consecutive composite integers, or 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218 are seven consecutive composite integers). It's a simple algorithm we're using. Anyway, there exists a sequence of 10000000000000000000000000000000000 consecutive composite integers and after all this there are still infinitely many primes coming up. If W is the number of seconds since the Big Bang, there exists a sequence of W consecutive composite (non-prime) integers. I think that's cool.

Edit: Sketch of how the algorithm works. I mentioned that 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218 are seven consecutive composite integers. This is so because 2x3x5x7=210, and to this add in order 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Enjoy your evening. Thanks for putting up.
I need to think about that a little bit
 

KSLion

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Oct 6, 2021
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As a sustainable energy source? No I don't see it.

This is the way I view it: for nuclear fission radioactive materials are readily available in nature. All man has done is collect and purify them. Want to create a new material like plutonium? Slowly collect the emissions and bombard uranium. Nothing fancy, can be done relatively easily.

Fusion on the other hand is found nowhere in nature except in a star. Not on this planet, any other planet, asteroids, comets, etc. The amount of sustained pressure and temperature is phenomenal - a massive gas giant like Jupiter or even larger doesn't create it. Then you have the problem of materials of construction. Every material is created in the fusion reactor of a star. What materials hold up against a star? Nothing does, massive gravity holds that star together. How are you going to create that on earth? While it's nice to ponder, containing sustained fusion nuclear explosions is a pipe dream.

It's a massive waste of money. These articles use descriptive terms to describe progress. If you have to walk to the moon, and you climb the empire state building, sure, technically you've achieved orders of magnitude of improvement, but it's still meaningless.
Understand where you're coming from but, without any scientific facts to back it up, I believe the human race will ultimately be able to harness nuclear fusion for its own benefit.

Modern humans supposedly have existed for about 200,000 years. For all but the most recent 119 or so of those years, the prevailing wisdom among many intelligent people regarding controlled, powered flight in the Earth's atmosphere held that if God wanted mankind to fly He would've given him wings, and I suppose those wings would've been on his back and would've flapped like a bird's -- or maybe an angel's. But they obviously weren't there. So, what was the natural conclusion?

Then, in December, 1903 a couple of obscure bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio turned conventional wisdom on its head and proved that, in fact, God had given Man wings. They were there all the time. It's just that they were in his mind, not on his back where conventional wisdom would've had them. The Wrights' first flight wasn't much, a forty-yard jump over a large puddle, but that turned out to be enough of a start to allow astronauts to land on the Moon 66 years later. Or, put another way, the modern human race required nearly 200,000 years of existence to figure out how to fly in Earth's atmosphere at all. Then, in 66 years, a little less than the average length of a single human lifetime, it went from not being able fly at all --- to the Moon.

Am guessing that, in 2022, controlling the fusion reaction may appear to some like the mastering of controlled, powered atmospheric flight looked to their 19th- or early 20th century grandfathers, i.e. nearly-, and probably totally-, impossible. But if past is prologue, at some point science will produce the necessary breakthrough(s) and, assuming humanity can also find a way to avoid using its existing, scientifically-developed, nuclear fusion weaponology to blow itself to bits in the meantime, will then move on to the next "impossibility" like, say, time travel, or wormholes or ...???
 
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Woodpecker

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Or, put another way, the modern human race required nearly 200,000 years of existence to figure out how to fly in Earth's atmosphere at all. Then, in 66 years, a little less than the average length of a single human lifetime, it went from not being able fly at all --- to the Moon.
Then, after another 55 years, well be flying to ... the moon.
 

PrtLng Lion

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Oct 14, 2021
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Understand where you're coming from but, without any scientific facts to back it up, I believe the human race will ultimately be able to harness nuclear fusion for its own benefit.

Modern humans supposedly have existed for about 200,000 years. For all but the most recent 119 or so of those years, the prevailing wisdom among many intelligent people regarding controlled, powered flight in the Earth's atmosphere held that if God wanted mankind to fly He would've given him wings, and I suppose those wings would've been on his back and would've flapped like a bird's -- or an angel's. But obviously they weren't there. So, what was the natural conclusion?

Then, in December, 1903 a couple of obscure bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio turned conventional wisdom on its head and proved that, in fact, God had given Man wings. They were there all the time. It's just that they were in his mind, not on his back where conventional wisdom would've had them. The Wrights' first flight wasn't much, but it turned out to be enough of a start to allow astronauts to land on the Moon 66 years later. Or, put another way, the modern human race required nearly 200,000 years of existence to figure out how to fly in Earth's atmosphere at all. Then, in 66 years, a little less than the average length of a single human lifetime, it went from not being able fly at all --- to the Moon.

Am guessing that, in 2022, controlling the fusion reaction may appear to some like the mastering of controlled, powered atmospheric flight looked to their 19th- or early 20th century grandfathers, i.e. nearly, probably totally-, impossible. But if past is prologue, at some point science will produce the necessary breakthrough(s) and, assuming humanity can also find a way to avoid using its existing, scientifically-developed nuclear-fusion weapons to blow itself to bits in the meantime, will then move on to the next "impossibility" like, say time travel, or wormholes or ...???
Excellent post.

It's amazing to look at the technology we have today (internet, cell phones, air travel, ....) and to think how they'd have been perceived by humans in the 18th century as impossible. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

But here we are in 2022 with these things we now take for granted. Seems to me the latest breakthrough at Lawrence Liverpool will almost certainly lead to more widespread use of fusion as a source of energy in some number of decades; militarily, commercially, and residentially.
 

Catch1lion

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RochLion

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Has anything happened to Ranga Dias ?

Looks like Ranga has left Univ of Rochester back in Nov 2024. After the university conducted 4 investigations of his research data mismanagement on room temperature superconductivity. Doesn't say if he was fired or left on his own. Local news never reported much of anything on this whole thing.

 
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