News this week of a historic fusion reaction that produced more energy than was used to ignite it could move the world one step closer to a power source that doesn’t create radioactive waste as a byproduct. This is a major advancement in the long, complicated history of nuclear energy — which has been used to create electricity but also weapons. During World War II, the United States became concerned that Nazi scientists were close to creating an atomic bomb. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein issued an alert to then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt: “A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory,” Einstein wrote. U.S. scientists and government officials… Source link

This is an opinion editorial by Will Szamosszegi, founder and CEO of bitcoin mining hosting service Sazmining. Money and energy are two of the most fundamental aspects of an economy because both are universal. Energy is required to transform raw materials into final consumer goods and services. Money is required to store wealth, calculate revenue and losses and trade for goods and services that you couldn’t acquire through barter. Although Bitcoin drastically improves humanity’s relationship with both energy and money, the problems that plague both energy and money are likely to survive a Bitcoin standard, even if they become lesser in severity. With respect to energy, government regulations, subsidies and bans will continue to have sway. With respect to money, governments will, in all… Source link

There’s been a nuclear fusion breakthrough as significant as “man landing on the moon”. Photo: Shutterstock Enervated Australian scientists are already flagging the prospects for development of a major new domestic industry after US physicists announced they had achieved the “holy grail of physics” by successfully producing surplus energy from a nuclear fusion reaction. The experiment, conducted within the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, used strong ultraviolet lasers to heat a fuel capsule filled with deuterium and tritium so much that it imploded. This increased the pressure and temperature inside the capsule, forcing the deuterium and tritium in the capsule – each a slightly different form… Source link

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Energy from nuclear fusion has been a part of science fiction for generations. (SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE) DANIEL DAE KIM: (As Raymond) Doctor, we have a successful fusion reaction. ROBERT DOWNEY JR: (As Tony Stark) Stark Tower is about to become a beacon of self-sustaining, clean energy. MARK HAMILL: (As Luke Skywalker) Ready for some power? BEN BURTT: (As R2D2, beeping). HAMILL: (As Luke Skywalker) OK. BRUCE GREENWOOD: (As Christopher Pike) Spock detonated a cold fusion device. MICHAEL J FOX: (As Marty McFly) What are you doing, doc? CHRISTOPHER LLOYD: (As Dr. Emmett Brown) I need fuel. SHAPIRO: Well, yesterday, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced that scientists had reached a real-life… Source link

Two Mormons walk into a coffee shop. No Wilson, this isn’t a joke—but it could be. They order lattes but the Gentile barista turns them away because she doesn’t embrace their beliefs. The religious freedom/civil rights conflict is central to the Culture Wars and a pending U.S. Supreme Court case—303 Creative v. Elenis—where a Colorado designer and Evangelical, Lori Smith, refused to create a wedding website for a same-sex couple. … Source link

This post contains a video, which you can also view here. To support more videos like this, head to patreon.com/rebecca! Transcript: “Breakthrough in nuclear fusion could mean ‘near-limitless energy’”, reports the well-respected Guardian newspaper this week. “Researchers managed to release more energy than they put in: a positive gain known as ignition.” Wow! That’s incredible! I mean that literally, that is so huge that it is not credible. I do not believe it.  Okay, let me start by saying that I am NOT a nuclear physicist. In fact I am no kind of physicist at all. I took calculus my senior year of high school and I remember NOTHING. I think I got a B? I also got what I suspect is the only bachelor of science degree in the United States that does not require graduates… Source link

One of the most important stories of the year, certainly the one with the greatest potential, concerns the efforts to recreate nuclear fusion, the power source of the stars. American researchers say that for the first time they have produced more energy from the process than they have put in. It is a small but greatly encouraging breakthrough after decades of experimentation. Although the latest development took place in California, Britain has been in the vanguard of this research since the Joint European Torus (JET) opened at Culham near Oxford in 1984. Cynics will point out that the technical hurdles that need to be overcome are formidable, possibly insuperable. There have also been setbacks, as when two scientists in 1989 claimed to have discovered cold fusion only for their… Source link

News of ‘hot’ fusion success recalls Utah’s infamous claims of ‘cold’ fusion 33 years ago. (Doug Pizac | AP) Martin Fleischmann, left, of the University of Southampton, England, talks to reporters about cold fusion as University of Utah chemist B. Stanley Pons listens in Los Angeles, May 9, 1989. The pair of scientists claimed they achieved nuclear fusion, but that claim could never be proven and the university was widely ridiculed.   | Dec. 13, 2022, 1:00 p.m. A nuclear fusion experiment that generates more energy than it consumes? For old timers in Utah, news that scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have produced such an experiment harkens back to 1989, when the University of Utah made a claim that jolted the world. Livermore scientists are… Source link

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Energy from nuclear fusion? Utah has been there, not done that  Salt Lake Tribune Source link

How Cold is it? How cold is it going to get? Pons and Fleishman rejoice! Cold fusion is back! It’s time to give up the oil gig because we will have an endless supply of cheap and clean energy. Way back in 1989, two electrochemists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, reported that they created a machine that produced anomalous heat (“excess heat”) of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes. It was cold fusion. Yet they were later dismissed and even ridiculed because others were not able to duplicate that experiment until maybe now. The FT reports that US government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless, zero-carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time, according to… Source link