So, now that I think I’ve got a handle on this, let’s talk about a more serious topic: ENERGY. Our economy, nay, our very lives DEPEND on having surplus energy. In modern times, there’s three dependable ways to get this in bulk: burn something you found in the ground to fire a boiler, fission some radioactive material to fire a boiler, or dam a river to spin a turbine. And yes, there’s other thingies, wind and solar and tidal turbines and whatnot.

But none of these have an endgame. Especially the renewable ones, there is no scenario where they FUEL civilization.

The Holy Grail of energy, is something that uses a commonly-available fuel, that’s pollution free, and there’s only one thing that fits the bill: nuclear FUSION.

For this thread, I’d like to discuss contemporary fusion research, and why you think it might be worth pursuing.

I’m gonna open the floor with THREE research projects that caught my interest, two of which have had recent news.

The oldest thing I want to talk about is a project Robert Bussard (yes, the famous one) worked on for the US Navy, the POLYWELL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

Now the polywell is a logical outgrowth of the work done by Philo Farnsworth (yes, a real person) on something he invented decades earlier called the FUSOR. And the principle is one of electro-static containment. You get enough hydrogen ions in a close enough space, they’re gonna fuse, baby! And it does work, but not to overunity.

The second, more modern thing I want to talk about, is the STELLARATOR. Now, this a variant of a tokamak, and this video kind of explains the important innovation having been made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKTePWmHRQw

The problem here is, it’s difficult to implement, and unproven technology. Even if it does work, it’s EXPENSIVE and there’s and adoption cost.

And the THIRD thing, the newest, is based on an old concept:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion

The basic concept being, if you fuse a boron atom with a hydrogen atom, you get some slpha particles and a net STATIC charge. One company claims to have achieved this mieracle

https://www.hb11.energy/

So, people, let’s talk about ENERGY. That shit we’ve all been asked to march off and die for. What is its future, and where do we fit into it?