Unlimited energy is coming

Edited because people do not read. The opening line is a JOKE. I bolded the important part where I said I was kidding.

Someone just contacted Greer that an alien has sent a radio beacon that promises unlimited energy to all nations in the world. No, kidding... this is the real thing.

One giant leap for mankind: £13bn Iter project makes breakthrough in quest for nuclear fusion, a solution to climate change and an age of clean, unlimited energy

"Over the next few years about a million individual components of the highly complex fusion reactor will arrive at the Cadarache site from around the world. They will be assembled like a giant Lego model in a nearby building which has a volume equal to 81 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Nothing is left to chance in a project that has defied potential Babel-like misunderstandings between the collaborating nations. The design, development and construction of a machine that will attempt to emulate the nuclear fusion reactions of the Sun is proving to be a triumph of diplomacy, as well as science and engineering."

link

So they are going to turn the earth into a second sun. Why can't they build a tiny one first.

What does ITER have to do with Greer? As far as I know. A-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y N-o-t-h-i-n-g,

Right?

Originally posted by bananasam
Someone just contacted Greer that an alien has sent a radio beacon that promises unlimited energy to all nations in the world. No, kidding... this is the real thing.

Yourve got to be kidding... HOAX bin please.

Originally posted by rickymouse
So they are going to turn the earth into a second sun.

Why can't they build a tiny one first.

Although in a human's perspective, the ITER project seems big, in the terms of fusion and mother nature in general, it's smaller than a pea in the ocean.

I wouldn't worry about it either, the reaction loses juice, it simply shuts off. No runaway reactions. It's fusion, not fission.

Originally posted by Nomad451

Originally posted by bananasam
Someone just contacted Greer that an alien has sent a radio beacon that promises unlimited energy to all nations in the world. No, kidding... this is the real thing.

Yourve got to be kidding... HOAX bin please.

Wait, you got to be kidding me. No hoax bin... Not with Greer's track record. Don't you remember when the aliens told him he'd win the lottery, and they told him to show up a certain time and place to get the numbers, so since he was gonna see them face to face, he charged people $1000 to tag along. But what happened was the radio signals kept getting screwed up, so everytime he went none would show up. But lo and behold, after a few dozen times his bank account was jacked so technically he won the lotto.

Now how are you gonna call that a hoax?

Originally posted by rickymouse
So they are going to turn the earth into a second sun.

Why can't they build a tiny one first.

There's been lots of tiny ones. And it can't turn Earth into a second sun.

Originally posted by bananasam
Someone just contacted Greer that an alien has sent a radio beacon that promises unlimited energy to all nations in the world. No, kidding... this is the real thing.

"Greer" and "real thing" don't go together. Nor did an alien send him a radio beacon. However, ITER is real. We'll see if they can make it to breakeven.

They have been working on this thing for like 20 years now.

So far it has been a huge waste of time money and resources.
I'm not going to be holding my breath.

That's a pretty extravagant hoax

www.iter.org...

I think Greer was mentioned as a joke.

Originally posted by watchitburn
They have been working on this thing for like 20 years now.

So far it has been a huge waste of time money and resources.
I'm not going to be holding my breath.

I feel about ITER like I do when I buy a lottery ticket. It would be nice if I won, and I dream about it, but don't really expect much.

Disregard

I misread the post.

Putting Greer aside, IF and a big... if they were to create such a thing the cost would be ridiculously absurd. Somebody's going to pay for it in the form of an equally ridiculous power bill.

Originally posted by flyingfish
Putting Greer aside, IF and a big... if they were to create such a thing the cost would be ridiculously absurd. Somebody's going to pay for it in the form of an equally ridiculous power bill.

I see it as a test bed for "what exactly do we have to do to get this to work", the first few will suck heinously in terms of cost.

After it's engineerable physics it'll be a lot more straightforward to design for cost optimization.

Bad news folks, jesus nor aliens are coming to save us, don't put off what needs to be done in hopes of pie in the sky.
Yep, we're gonna have to fix the problem ourselves.

Originally posted by Nomad451

Originally posted by bananasam
Someone just contacted Greer that an alien has sent a radio beacon that promises unlimited energy to all nations in the world. No, kidding... this is the real thing.

Yourve got to be kidding... HOAX bin please.

Indeed I said I was kidding...if you guys aren't willing to read two sentences, I really fear the ATS community will not be able to make a compelling argument against anything.

I wonder if this guy is involved?
www.keshefoundation.org...
He seems to be way ahead of everyone else! Not sure if its quite the same thing but for a layman like me I think this guy is onto something big. What do you science buffs think?

ITER isn't really news. It just rumbles on like all these giant projects do. Maybe it'll work, maybe it wont. At this point many careers are pinned to it so they will continue to flog it for decades even if it isn't going anywhere in particular.

I found the Fusion presentation by the Skunk Works more interesting. (There is another thread)

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by rickymouse
So they are going to turn the earth into a second sun.

Why can't they build a tiny one first.

The last time I read about physicists discussing this, was that it is something to do with the ratios of the energies that you need. Fusing together two hydrogen nucleii takes in a certain amount of energy (Ef) and gives out a certain amount (Er). They can actually do this on a lab desktop use regular hydrogen gas and a couple of tiny metal plates. They can literally squash two atoms together, but the energy released is in the order of nanowatts and is less than the energy put in to move the metal plates. So apart from a cute scientific experiment, it isn't much use.

We need Ef < Er, and Er >= 10 Megawatts for any commercial use.

For a star, Ef comes from gravitational generated pressure. Er is from the resulting products. Our only option on Earth is to use magnetic fields, as anything solid would just melt from the released energy. Even then, the magnetic fields required are so strong that anything made of stone or metals would vaporize at small scales (due to heat transfer limits). So there's this restriction that you need something the size of a large office block in order for all the equations to balance out. Other requirements are that the only way to get such strong magnetic fields is to use equipment generating the magnetic field needs to be close to be absolute zero and also be resistant to thermal expansion or contraction. So you end up with a system the size of an office block.

reply to post by bananasam


I went to your source and read the article. A very interesting read. The main thing I worry about is another Fukushima, when I hear anything about nuclear power.

But, They, (ahem) assure us-

“A Fukushima-like accident is impossible at Iter because the fusion reaction is fundamentally safe. Any disturbance from ideal conditions and the reaction will stop. A runaway nuclear reaction and a core meltdown are simply not possible,” he said.

I don't know even with all their assurances, i am still skeptical. I sure wish these (so called) alien friends would come up with a safer way of producing our energy. Me thinks, the reptilian fiends may be trying to eradicate the earth, after all.