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star-power in a bottle?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Vivek Golikeri, Jan 22, 2015.

  1. Vivek Golikeri

    Vivek Golikeri Active Member

    Lockheed-Martin is researching the processes needed to create controlled fusion on a compact and controlled scale. Basically, what this would do is literally to replicate the forces at work inside our sun and other stars on a miniature basis. Up to now, the majority of nuclear energy has been produced the opposite way, namely by fission or breaking down heavier elements into lighter ones. If successful, Lockheed-Martin's compact fusion would do precisely the reverse. It would generate energy by compressing elements with lower atomic numbers into elements with larger ones.

    Using this technique, a generator merely the size of a truck could generate enough power to supply 100,000 people. Fusion produces three or four times as much power as fission, so that the cost of electricity would be dramatically reduced. While this would revolutionize the economy and the way people live and operate, this new system would have yet another intriguing side-effect. For the first time, humanity would literally be able to create elements synthetically under controlled conditions. Thus much as genetic engineering has raised both abilities and ethical issues previously not worth seriously thinking about, compact fusion would create both new possibility and new dissension.

    All of a sudden, the ability to create precious elements like gold or platinum would be a great temptation. Yet if too many did this too often, the value of those very same elements would be eroded. Legislation might be required to forbid or severely limit the creation of such metals by compact fusion. But on the other hands elements currently too rare to be commercially feasible could now be produced in viable quantities. The element which leaps to my mind is selenium, which has the fascinating property of converting sunlight into electricity. An abundant supply of this currently super-rare metal would enable humankind to tap into as much solar energy as we want.
     
  2. Vivek Golikeri

    Vivek Golikeri Active Member

    A basic invention is one which changes the way people live. Some such inventions are the telephone, the radio, television and the airplane. The last time something so dramatic was invented was the microchip in the late 1970's or early 1980's. Previously, computers in my youth were monsters filling a whole room. You needed a genius or a super-skilled person merely to operate one. Today we all have pc's, laptops, and computers inside so many things.

    Compact fusion, all of a sudden, will enable humankind to create spaceships powered by energy which has then become both affordable and of sufficient quantity. Vehicles combining the functions of airplanes and spaceships might become commonplace, with airplanes going between New York City and Los Angeles in a mere fifteen or twenty minutes by traveling through space where there is no air resistance. However, this will also create the need for an international convention for the regular maintenance and repair of the Earth's ozone layer because of so many vehicles going through it all the time.

    Indeed, over the next hundred years the possession of compact fusion might even make it possible to create earthlike conditions in the outer parts of the solar system or interstellar space. No longer dependent on our sun's "Goldilocks" or habitable zone in order to have normal room temperature, spaceships or space habitats will merely take a "baby sun" with them wherever they go.
     
  3. Bine

    Bine Full Member

    Congratulations on your new invention!
     
  4. Vivek Golikeri

    Vivek Golikeri Active Member

    Bine, how I dearly wish it were "my" new invention! I'd be sitting pretty on billions of cookies right now. No.....as a writer and a poet, I make it my business to keep abreast of developing trends. Instead of purely posting comments expressing opinions on controversial subjects, let us also spend time discussing things that will reshape the future.
     

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