Hello again! I am so sorry that I haven't posted in awhile, so I'll just throw out this quick update before I head off to sleep (a revolutionary concept). So, let me talk about what I think the future of our civilization depends upon. It is undeniable now that the future of mankind rests upon how we use our energy and where we get it from. Currently our oil reserves can support the planet for awhile longer, but it is costly in every sense of the word. The prices of oil fluctuate constantly and they have innumerable domino effects upon every aspect of global politics, social structure, and economics. As tired as some of you may be of hearing the environmental effects of oil and petroleum production and consumption they cannot be ignored. To go on a mild tangent we had one of the most devastating environmental and economic disasters fairly recently (BP for those of you who don't want to think about it too hard). It ended up ruining a vital ecosystem as well as an energy company that frankly could have had a future. However, the economic need and demand of the global population encouraged an increase in oil farms, especially offshore. Dangerous practices such as 'fracking' are used wantonly even today with little to no regard as to the long term effects. [Fracking is essentially drilling a hole deep underground, then forcing pressurized steam into the hole, essentially cracking the ground around what is prospected to be an oil pocket, wherein the extraction machines can siphon the oil above ground. I won't go into too much detail but fracking causes all sorts of problems, including a release of heavy metals and dangerous natural chemicals into local water supplies, not to mention the terrain damage that a unsecured fracking process can cause. I will do another post on fracking sometime later.]
So. Back to my point. Alternate ways need to be found to revolutionize both where we get our energy from, and how we distribute it. The infrastructure required alone for the transportation of all manners of alternative energies are problematic and wasteful at best. That is where room-temperature superconductors come in (again, I will save that for another post). However, I want to briefly talk about what progress humankind is making in the elusive process of nuclear fusion. Now let me preclude this with a theoretical warning. Fusion according to most laws of thermodynamics is impossible. The first Law of Thermodynamics (in accordance with the Law of the Conservation of Energy) states simply that energy cannot be created or destroyed. That means that whatever energy you put into or remove from a system, you are left with the same energy in the other position (If i put 1000 J of energy into a system, the system now has a maximum of 1000 J of energy in addition to its current energy). That being said, a nuclear fusion process in essence suggests that it can produce more power and energy than it took to initiate. There may be other forces at play in this case, but we will not know until we find out (how's that for classic Scientific Method? And no, cold fusion does not count towards proof.).
So what are we doing now about learning the secrets of fusion? If you don't know already, the sun is essentially one unbelievably huge mass that is undergoing fusion processes. If done right, fusion can be self-sustaining (at least to an extent). You should have some concept of what a black hole is, or a supernova, but the point is that stars collapse through a supernovae process and then basically collapse into a black hole (the reason why is not concrete, but there are some pretty good theories out there right now). But stars like the Sun will eventually run out of fuel. I'll post yet another article sometime in the future about the four-step self-sustaining fusion process of stars, why, and how they burn out (for more advanced science-y people). But the fusion process will consistently generate large amounts of energy. That is the plan for the (not really) famous National Ignition Facility. The entire goal of this cluster of buildings is to fire possibly the most powerful laser on this planet into a deuterium or similar hydrogen-nuclei based fuel and compress it to the point that the atoms fuse in a self-sustaining reaction. The laser used in the NIF was the first to break the 1 MJ barrier (1 million Joules of energy) in 2009. [To give you an idea, 1 MJ is about the energy contained in a 2000 pound car moving at about 100 mph. But in a photon. Through complicated physics principles, a photon essentially has no mass. It has energy (in Joules) given by the equation E=hf (Planck's Postulate), but 1 MJ of energy in a very, very small particle becomes incredibly impressive, especially when considering that you don't necessarily feel individual photons. But you would feel a 1 MJ photon laser. It would be very painful.
The goal of this laser is to refract it through prismatic reflective mirrors around a sphere, and then again from evenly spaced points on the sphere inwards towards the middle, where the fuel is being kept. The problem with fusion is that it is millions of times harder than fission. Fission is splitting an atom's nucleus, releasing a large amount of energy. The neutrons from that nucleus hit surrounding nuclei, splitting them up, and causing a massive chain reaction that generates unbelievable amounts of force and energy. All from a group of atoms. Now whereas fission is outward movement of atoms and the atoms splitting up, fusion is the massive internal movement of atoms, with the goal of merging them into one big atom. This process is incredibly difficult (thanks to quantum chromodynamics), so the energy required to push all of the atoms together is hard to control and very unwieldy. The sphere and refracting mirrors must be perfect aligned. Leaving a gap in the compression force will force the atoms out of the hole like bullets out of a minigun. The force must also be in an adiabatic system, meaning whatever temperature generated within the fuel capsule must not have time to escape to the environment, as it will upset the whole balance, so the force has to be strong, precise, and fast. The process in itself is so difficult that the project essentially was abandoned until improvements could be made (which could not and still cannot be made due to a lack of budget and outside support). If the project were to fully succeed though, the energy to initiate it would supposedly be less than the energy that the process produces (again, violating Thermodynamics). However, it would be clean, powerful, and almost limitless.
So that's all I will write for tonight. I thank you all for being patient with me as I dealt with numerous outside things and hopefully you will be coming back soon. Expect another update soon though!
Thanks once again,
--J
