Fusion Definition and 849 Threads

Hey, From a Philosophy of Science angle, I'm trying to argue why concepts (say, scientific hypotheses) survive even when they don't seem to be succesful. I thought a great example would be fusion.:biggrin: Now, I'm not that big on particle physics (I've a Bachelor in Engineering Physics...

If I'm correct nuclear fusion rockets, (if used the right way), can go up to 10% the speed of light. THis is while nuclear fission goes 5% the speed of light. Yet NASA is working on craft that can make a "Earth-Mars-one way in two months". This is better then our current six month. Yet if I'm...

I wonder if someone could help me out. I'm a bit confused about how fusion (and fission for that matter) releases energy. Looking at a graph of binding energy per nucleon against mass number, fusion gives out energy up to iron (correct?). The thing that confuses me is that as two nuclei are...

just curious.

By comparing hot, cold and soundfusion (sonofusion) power which one yields more energy and more favourable for future power generation? well as far as i know sonoluminscence are generated from collapse of bubble when excited by ultrasonic sound wave, thus light are emmited from it, and it is...

1.with the hot and cold fusion under experiment level now, would power from sound fusion provides equal or more power and economic value if it has been successfully researched? 2. what is the difficulty faced in building a commercial sound fusion generator? 3. Future of sound fusion...

If you miss the news report in the March 9th issue of Nature, you may want to read it. And... Zz.

I need to know the applications of nuclear fusion, Is there anybody who could help?

I have a graph here separated into 5 different parts (A-B, B-C, C-D, D-E, E-F) It is a curve going upwards...I just need to know how to calculate the heat of fusion of the substance using the curve in the graph...I can use the formula and calculate the heat of fusion for each little piece...

well, i stumbled across this link: http://jlnlabs.imars.com/cfr/index.htm it seems unbelievable that something is really happening in there... then i started looking around the net to see what other people think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion...

Okay deuterium consists of 1 proton and 1 neutron and tritium consists of 2 protons and 1 neutron, now if one atom of each, smash together that forms an atom of Helium which consists of 2 proton and 2 neutrons, a 3rd neutron is created and released, how does the 3rd neutron come about?

[SOLVED] fusion vs. fission I was trying to describe to my buddy the difference between fusion and fission and my explanation got a jumbled up, which made me realize how I myself don't really understand the difference. My understanding is... fission - two or more particles combines...

Is it a rumor or is the government really devolping a fusion rocket. From what I've heard it's so strong it could get us to Mars in as quick as 8 ays. Not lieing 8 days. If you wondering about the acceleration and deccearation it supposedly would have 1.5 time the force of gravity. So you could...

Hello. Often high temperature data are not available. I am missing the melting heat of many coumpounds. However, rather precise binary phase diagrams are available. (my examples deal with silicates, say CaO-SiO2 for example, http://www.npl.co.uk/mtdata/demo/dgox1.html) I would like to...

I asked one of the professors in the nuclear engineering department recently how inertial fusion could be a viable energy source if so little matter was fused. He told me that I would be suprised and said that I should do the calculation myself. I found the volume of the pellet, but now I have...

This is a pretty interesting theory on the evolution of stars and planetary systems. If you have the bandwidth, watch the movie linked in the paper. Has anybody seen this movie before, and are there alternate interpretations? http://xxx.lanl.gov/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0511/0511379.pdf

I recently came upon a reference to http://www.focusfusion.org, which led me to discover http://www.prometheus2.net and http://www.electronpowersystems.com. What these companies have in common is they propose to generate power using "clean" proton-boron fusion in a pulsed reactor. By pulsed, I...

why does the energy-liberating fusion process ends with the formation of iron and not heavier elements such as uranium?

I'm reading up on star formation and from what I've understood so far, is that protogalactic clouds with density fluctuations cool and then fragment after which, they fragment again into subfragments. Now do the density in these individual subfragments increase the temperature enough to start...

Hi. On a general discussion forum, we were debating wether gold could be obtained from iron; I argued that this is possible, since we are at the moment recreating, in accelerators, even harsher conditions that those necessary for the creation of gold (i.e. those of a supernova core collapse). A...

does an electrostatically confined plasma fed tritium produce energetic e3nough neutrons to create tritium if allowed to irradiate deutrium ?

If we made a custom levitating coil like this: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/3075/globe.html so that we could suspend a small Iron ball in the levitation coil. Next If we added two small but powerful electromagnets to each opposite equatorial side of the Iron ball so we could play...

In the 1997 5th edition of the Halliday Resnick and Walker fund of Physics this question is asked about colliding two beams of deuterons directly toward each other as well as perhaps colliding deuterons with a steel target. p1116. Why is this method not presently used. Doesn't the ITER do...

a fellow physics major was explaining to me that the latest technique in fusion has to do with creating tritium rings and using them to create another ring, using that ring to create yet a third ring. I'm only second year, so nuclear/particle physics are a bit over my head at this point. I'm...

Having been an avid movie watcher when I was younger, I've developed a sort of assumption that new power sources aren't very welcome in a country driven by oil economics. I understand a lot of the answers will be speculation, but I'd like to hear some opinions. Is it true that fusion is...

This is my first post here, so I'm not entirely sure whether or not this topic warrants a new thread. I've just had a simple idea that I'd like to get some feedback on, from people who have a little more experience in nuclear chemistry than I do. I was wondering if it would be possible to...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4629239.stm What is all this nonsense about what 'we' are going to do about new energy sources? What is the most that 'we' are ever going to do--vote for a new 'Energy Czar' to head-up our worldwide Centrally Planned Economy, and then sit back while...

A 58.0 kg ice-skater moving at 6.25 m/s glides to a stop. Assuming the ice is at 0°C and that 53.5 percent of the heat generated by friction is absorbed by the ice, how much ice melts? Should I first calculate the work? I know I need to use Delta U= Q-W...but what is Delta U in this case?

This may seem like a crazy or stupid question. Maybe both. What if there was a way to generate fusion using an element like Hydrogen, and then, miraculously, discover a way to generate fission out of the end result (in this case Hellium)? Could the constant fusion-fission between Hydrogen...

I have been reading about fusors. The articles usually refer to aneutronic reactions as though they are fusion. But are they really? For example, the pB11 reaction yields He, but this is some sort of fission isn't it? I.e. we start of with a heavier isotope and produce lighter ones through...

Hi I was reading an article in the New Scientist, about how fusion can be created in a device no bigger than a coffee cup. It said that an electrically polarised piece of deuterium doped lithium tantilate (don't know if this is the right spelling) placed in a strong electomagnetic field...

All right, you're going to have to really humor me here. As far as I know, the only kind of 'cold' fusion that has ever been demonstrated to work is muon-catalyzed. The reason it isn't viable is that is takes so much energy in the first place to create muons and they have a very short...

Could someone please give me a rough estimate as to what the mass of a 20MW focus fusion reactor might be, please. Seamo

What are projects about nuclear controlled fusion reactor to achieve Q > 1, or possibly obtain Q > 1.

http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/7/8/1 Strangely enough, while it looks similar, the experiment is actually different than the earlier Taleyarkhan experiment. Other than that, it is still equally controversial. Stay tune for more development in this saga... Zz.

Question about fusion... What are the problems for development, continuouly power production and economical, in a nuclear fusion reactor and nuclear fusion power plant ?

PLEASE INFORM ME ABOUT THE CONTROLLED FUSION REACTOR. Is possible the continuos use the fusor and plasma focus, using fuel : pB11 or D-He3. Please send me information. Best Regards

French fusion reactor and some other skeptical stuff http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20050627-10372700-bc-nukefusion.xml Someone brought this up on a non-scientific site and said it would "provide 2x the worlds energy". Obvious BS so I am wondering if...

I was reading aboot sono-luminescence, and the researcher from llnl, that thought that he had (mistakenly) produced nuclear fusion. With all of the info available that I could find aboot sono-luminescence...it all seems to come down to 'how fascinating, but we don't much aboot it'. With that in...

ok my final exam for chem is tomorrow and i need help badly on this practice problem! here it is: 3. When 9.250 kJ of heat is added to 20.0 g of ice at 0.0 degrees Celcius, what is the final temperature of the water? The heat of fusion for water is 335 J/g. I don't know how on Earth to...

Would common sense dictate that along with providing energy, that each fusion reactor would double as a Helium balloon factory, or would I have to take it upon myself to lobby for the creation of such a facility when the time comes? I would assume that any scientist worth his weight in salt...

Hey, I remember watching a program (Horizon - UK) on an indian scientist who claimed to have caused cold fusion in a lab. The program tried to recreate it (the procedures were not actually the same - but some big name scientists advised them which equipment would be used), and failed. I...

I'm sure most saw the article in today's NY Times on "table top fusion". (For those who haven't...) http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Tabletop-Fusion.html?hp&ex=1114660800&en=6ac101f390e18d4d&ei=5094&partner=homepage And the article does mention that this experiment doesn't do...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=753&e=1&u=/ap/20050427/ap_on_sc/tabletop_fusion The article says that the results of this experiment will be published in Thursday's edition of Nature. I'm sure many of you have subscriptions. Would anybody care to recap?

Don't miss this week's Nature! Or, if you don't have access, read here: http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/4/15/1 Zz.

Which graduate field would be best if you want to help out in determining a way to harness fusion power at a net result and such? I was told plasma physics would be a good field if i want to go into that sort of research.

In this post on the blog of Harvard string theorist Lubos Motl, he writes: Is it true that the power generated from fusion has increased by 14 orders of magnitude since the seventies, and that they're only a few orders of magnitude away from the goal? If so, does his last sentence suggest there...

If this is probable:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4270297.stm then 'Stars in a Jar' would be the ultimate weapon, clean thorough and totally effective. Lets say the evidence existed from the LAN 'newmexico' database, and this mysteriously vanished along with other relevant papers...

Some principal nuclear fusion reactions which have been considered are: 1) D + T -> n + 4He 2) D + 3He -> H + 4He 3) D + D -> H + T / 3He + n 4) T + T -> 4He + 2n 5) T + 3He -> (various products) 6) H + 11B -> 3 (4He) from G. H. Miley, H. Towner and N. Ivich, U. of...

I have no clue how to do this? Which would require more heat, melting 500 g of 0 C ice or turning 500 g of 100 C water into steam?