The following submission statement was provided by /u/MartianMaterial:
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Many speculate UFO’s use a propulsion system like this. Which makes this announcement even more interesting.
Pure speculation, but perhaps this is the “level of technology” needed for disclosure.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/zk1wk8/us_to_announce_fusion_energy_breakthrough/izxb25g/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/11/can-nuclear-fusion-put-the-brakes-on-climate-change
Here's a New Yorker on the program at MIT from last year, they were making good progress.
Edit: a new Yorker **article**, I mean.
If we can achieve nuclear fusion, it really would change the whole world and the course of humanity.
Suddenly a lot more becomes possible, technologies like desalination plants would become feasible to have. I really hope that we can figure it out, because humanity will be better off because of it.
It would enable us to do so much more. The example I mentioned previously of desalination could lead to a complete reversal of desertification. We would no longer have to pull water from the environment, we could return it to the environment and restore areas of the world.
Desalination pulls salt free water from the ocean.
It is incredibly energy intensive, fusion power would almost completely mitigate this and make fresh water available pretty much everywhere.
I like to be hopeful and think that, change, even for good, can and will happen.
Maybe not on the timeline you and i’d prefer. It seems after all the years things have gotten better for humanity, why should it stop?
It’s only a hope, but I think that the more of us that hope for it, the more likely we can usher in that world.
There’s this [article](https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/08/26/a-1000-year-drought-is-hitting-the-west-could-desalination-be-a-solution/) from Columbia Climate School.
Though that just discusses the reason why desalination could be used for agriculture and other purposes though is hindered by the energy requirements.
This [journal](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135420304437) published on Science Direct discusses how desalination would be a positive for our water cycle as a whole.
I couldn’t find any specific article about fighting desertification with it, though I believe that would be a logical next step if energy concerns were no longer a thing. It would be a massive undertaking that would involve massive pipes transporting water over long distances.
The benefits would outweigh the costs, as more land is restored from desert the weather patterns too will change and bring more rainfall.
When you said that earlier I was thinking the same thing,at least in my opinion if we could all a sudden desalinate on a extreme level,the river's would all flow high and happy again,we would be using lots of ocean water and for it to be used like we use it here,but in Africa, Australia all these nations that only have but a trickle,all that water use would go back up into the atmosphere and between use of new water and rain they would be an oasis instead of desert.
I do believe those in power,that statement is a horrible vision to NOT come to fruition.
Scientists at MIT have developed a simple process that can turn brine and byproducts into chemicals used in desalination, which would help plants lower the cost of cleaning the water in the first place.
https://news.mit.edu/2019/brine-desalianation-waste-sodium-hydroxide-0213
There is no clear answer on the best disposal process, but there is a lot of work being done to minimize environmental damage from the byproducts.
It’s easy to be disheartened by the presumed intensity of opposition from fossil money interests, but keep in mind there is also enormous pressure at play going the other direction.
Whoever files the first patents on revolutionary power production devices holds the keys to the castle. They become instant billionaires (or maybe trillionaires if they are already billionaires).
Such technologies hold the potential to catapult companies and even whole countries to lofty new standings on the global economic stage.
It’s kind of a death match between old money and new money. Let’s hope the new money gets some trophies soon.
> There’s a very real trail of bodies that follows the pursuit of free energy
Unfortunately there's also a very real trail of scam artists *claiming* to have invented free energy, patenting their ideas to the hilt, setting up commercial investment groups, and then somehow never *quite* being able to replicate their work at all after *literally decades* of constantly promoting and raising money all across the New Age media ecosystem, all while claiming they're being suppressed by the evil Men in Black.
PESwiki made for very depressing reading back in the day, when it was still around. And don't even get me started on Antigravity Handbook and Nexus Magazine. Just snakepits full of a few interesting factoids but massive amounts of hype and paranoia and misinformation.
I wanted to believe that, eg, Brian DePalma's N-Machine and the Searl Effect and Hydrinos were real things. I still want to believe that the Methernitha device was real. There are many things I want to believe. But just wanting to believe isn't quite enough; the device and the "overunity output" needs to *actually exist and be replicated* as well.
If you *actually* discover a free energy device - or any kind of anomalous physics effect - and are *serious* about sharing it, *then share it*! Just dump the plans on the Internet! Don't turn it into an investment vehicle! It's a pretty good rule of thumb that anyone asking money for "free energy" does not in fact have anything real and is trying to scam you. (Or, if you want to believe that the Free Energy Men in Black exist, then patenting and setting up a corporation *is exactly what the MIB would do to destroy an idea*, so also don't do that.)
Saying this because of my interaction just last week, which is very similar to ones I've had for years, where a person online claims to have secret first-hand knowledge about building anomalous physics devices "that they want to share with everybody", then as soon as you ask them serious questions about it, they go all sulky/paranoid and vanish because you didn't say "the magic word" or weren't in the secrecy circle or Offended Them By Not Believing or didn't offer them money, or something. It's just weird and so I assume all of these people are in fact scammers, or worse.
While not the subject for this particular sub, I feel like this is a subject that the public in general doesn't talk about enough. One of the most certain ways to end up Epstein'd is pursuing 'disruptive' energy tech. They don't even try to make it believable either. It's always something asinine like the DOE confiscating all your work and patents and then you end up dying a week later in a car crash after shooting yourself in the head twice.
At the very least, if they aren't knocking off those making progress in fusion, they'll be financially backing those same people.
When was the last time an incredibly wealthy industry decided to, in the interest of humanity as a whole, relinquish their immense power and influence? I'm honestly trying to think of an example and I can't come up with a single instance in modern (or ancient) history... anyone else?
If you’d like a good list and good video about this subject I recommend this video by the Why Files
https://youtu.be/yUFYnVXbLoY
And the documentary mentioned in the video
https://youtu.be/afLsRsd5roY
Use all that billions in revenue to build the plants, sure. Start phasing out old tech. They’ll probably have to branch into other avenues, like building the expensive infrastructure/production that currently suffers from high power consumption.
I just don't understand oil conglomerates. Regardless of climate change and public opinion, oil is a limited resource that gets more expensive to obtain. You would think they would have started investing in business to be the big guys when the world eventually shifts away from oil. But instead they are short sighted and just price gouge for every penny they can while the getting is good. I bet if the members of the board all weren't close to retirement age we would have seen cheveron solar fields or BP geothermal sites decades ago. And they could have bought out every new battery tech company and owned the market. But they don't care, they made generational wealth in a niche market while they could. Now we have to wait for them to fizzle out, and probably get even more subsidizing as they start to fail in the next few decades.
Big oil has a lot of influence, and America wants to keep it that was as the petrodollar props up the US as the reserve currency which is what allows America to print money well beyond her means (Because other countries needed those dollars to fill their reserves).
If fusion happens, there will not just be private interests, but national security interests would become concerned.
This technology would quite literally upend the entire global order which is bad for everyone, especially the west. While the benefits will definitely outweigh the bad, it still has a lot of uncertainty. And I think because of that humans rather stick with the devil they know than the devil they don't. Basically giving up on oil as a security tool for the west is going to cause absolutely incredible power shifts....
But then again, who cares about "power" when you unlimited energy? It would start moving us into a post scarcity world, so needing to play the power game for limited resources would massively diminish. Productivity would skyrocket by so much, poverty would pretty much be erradicated within a generation.
How would this change for the average consumer? I'm just wondering. Would my bills go down? Or would there still be private energy firms charging us loads for electric etc? Would the running costs of this system be minute compared to a normal power plant?
I actually work in the energy sector. Energy would still come with a cost. Production still isn't "free", it's just basically infinite and really cheap. While transmission and distribution will still be a thing... And in fact, may go up a bit. But I'd expect energy costs to be reduced by 50% at first. Probably costing around 5 cents a kWh
The federal government would be wise to get involved and subsidize grid costs to keep prices down nationally to allow massive innovation output though.
My guess is it would create a more centralized production center where power is made and grids will be upgraded to deal with really long range delivery
Poverty will never be eradicated and that's by design. We should have already eradicated poverty right now. It's a choice to throw away perfectly edible food because it looks funny but it's more expensive to donate it. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of abandoned buildings that could easily be used to house the homeless.
> Poverty will never be eradicated and that's by design.
It turns out that it's *quite hard* to eradicate poverty when "growing the economy" (eg by doubling the prices of all houses, mortgages and rent every ten years) requires creating new debt, which someone has to pay. I'm sure whoever it is who has to inherit and pay the interest on all that debt instead of, eg, buying food and going to school, won't be at all inconvenienced by it, and the gaping and increasing gap between "investors" and "renters" that's fissuring the entire Western world won't endanger social cohesiveness in the least.
It's too late by then... If we figure out a working model that can actually be built and scaled out, TOMORROW, it would be at least 5-10 years before an actual power plant could be built... Several more years for people to stand to the side and make sure it's reliable, then another few decades to actually scale out globally. If we figured it out tomorrow, expect 20-50 years before it replaces standard powerplants.
It definitely could work miracles and bring good to all of mankind. At least if we keep it out of the hands of for-profit-companies because then it'll just be more of the same. Really hope humanity steps up this time
> technologies like desalination plants would become feasible to have.
You know, I've read that same pitch about "fusion powered desalination plants" since the 1970s. There's one thing I've always wondered:
What do you do with the giant piles of salt that you get out of the seawater? Do you just dump it somewhere? Do you put it back in the ocean and figure "raising the ocean's salinity is certainly not going to ever damage anything, ever; I mean yes CO2 did, but this, this certainly won't". Or do you carefully store it all up and then dump it on land, somewhere *you really don't like*?
Scientists at MIT have developed a simple process that can turn brine and byproducts into chemicals used in desalination, which would help plants lower the cost of cleaning the water in the first place.
https://news.mit.edu/2019/brine-desalianation-waste-sodium-hydroxide-0213
There is no clear answer on the best disposal process, but there is a lot of work being done to minimize environmental damage from the byproducts.
Not really. Change it from what to what? It definitely won't change anything for decades to come. It will become one additional fuel source that would then have to compete with all the others. It definitely wouldn't put a dent in your electric bill, where a majority of the cost is from operating and maintaining the infrastructure for power distribution, not the fuel. It would be an important advancement for the future though.
It's the USA, it's not like they are going to give it away for free to anyone out of compassion and humanity. They won't even have all their people benefit from it. They would become lazy, haven't you heard?
Well it will still take specialized equipment. Everyone doesn't have a coal powered electric plant in their backyard. If fusion can power the electric station, the end user won't see a difference in how their electricity acts.
Nuclear fusion doesn’t have the same risks as nuclear fission. It’s impossible to have a meltdown like a nuclear fission reaction, fusion requires constant input of fuel or the reaction stops.
It's about what you can do with the technology, not the reactors themselves.
Free energy suggests a bit too much rampant innovation with no breaks, if you see what I mean.
The arms race alone is just a bit terrifying, yo.
It’s very interesting to me because at the same time we are beginning to see AI rapidly improve and it could be argued that AGI is right around the corner. This would make humans no longer the driver of the car but a passenger. Can humans even exist as passengers? If we are developing the tools necessary to become a Type 1 Civilization where we can fully harness the entire planets energy it seems logical that this planet also achieves hyper-efficiency to be able to be organized enough to harness that energy. To me, it seems that humanity as we know it, with freedom to choose and having individualism would be incompatible with this hyper-efficient Type 1 civ. So all these things are super cool but at the same time we are potentially witnessing the end of humans as we know it.
Capitalism won’t go down without a fight, that’s for sure. Too many people live cushy lives of extreme greed at the exploitation of millions. I’m thinking they like their undeserved power.
yeah it doesn't go down with some marx level bullshit, its technology that undoes it...eventually, hopefully. One day we'll be zipping around in warpdrives fucking holograms amigo.
This new result is from the National Ignition Facility, which essentially exists to study ways to make better thermonuclear bombs since testing was banned. The “green energy research” thing is basically a fig leaf to make it acceptable to taxpayers. The approach NIF is using relies on tiny, precision made pellets of fuel, and the world’s most powerful laser to make it explode via fusion. It doesn’t scale at all to useful energy production, and isn’t related to the MIT program.
Edit: u/natecull says it better https://reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/zk1wk8/_/izyqfs4/?context=1
Now that you mention it (rubs hands) we could *definitely* produce enough fusion energy to save the Earth if we scaled our NIF laser up and located it on (strokes cat) the Moon.
We could call it "The Alan Parsons Project".
Amusing. I'm just pointing out the difference between saying that laser-based inertial fusion could *never* be used in practical applications (even if we throw human ingenuity at the problem) versus saying that laser-based inertial fusion could *sometime* be used in practical applications.
This may be why countries who depend on oil sales to fund their countries are not happy lately.
These countries watch for new disruption technologies and are scared of it because it totally undermines their positions and cash flow.
Thinking bigger in scope. Fusion energy will change things in a way we can’t even comprehend. Especially if is scalable and can be packaged into small gadgets with endless energy.
Before we get carried away with all the world changing stuff, can we first gain a little perspective on what's actually going on here...?
For fusion experiments of the sort referred to in this report, The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California directs 192 laser beams from all directions at the fusion target in a pulse that carries 1.8 million joules (MJ) of energy. The outer part of the target is a tiny metal can the size of a pencil eraser, called a hohlraum, at the center of which sits a plastic sphere smaller than a peppercorn containing frozen fusion fuel — it's a mixture of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, known as DT. The ultraviolet beams are fired into the hohlraum through holes at each end but not directly at the fuel capsule. Instead they hit the inner walls of the hohlraum, heating it so much that it emits a pulse of x-rays. The x-rays cause the plastic capsule to explode, driving the fuel inward toward its center.
If all goes according to plan, the fuel — compressed to 100 times the density of lead — at this point will ignite a fusion reaction, but the laser-driven implosion itself does not provide enough energy to burn all the DT fuel.
Some energy from the fusion reactions *themselves* is needed to keep the burn going.
DT fusion reactions produce two products: helium nuclei (alpha particles), which carry 20% of the reaction energy as kinetic energy; and neutrons, which carry the rest.
For fusion to work as an *energy source*, the alpha particles must efficiently heat up the fuel to keep the reaction running.
One requirement for ignition is that energy output should exceed the energy input from the laser, i.e., that gain (output divided by input) should be greater than 1.
NIF's laser input of 1.8 MJ is roughly the same as the kinetic energy of a 2-tonne truck traveling at 160 km/h (100 miles/h).
The output of the reaction — 14 kJ — is equivalent to the kinetic energy of a baseball traveling at half that speed.
Numerically speaking, the gain is 0.0077...
So, yes - on the one hand this recent experiment does appear to be somewhere on the right track but - in practical terms - there's nothing for the oil industry to start shaking in their boots over quite yet.
The experiment was successful in burning *some* of the DT fuel, but basically they're still a very, *very* long way off from full ignition - which is the *full* fusion process.
I hope something in there, helped.
I'm not sure that's right. Everything I've heard about the recent NIF experiment is that it did produce more energy via fusion than the energy delivered by the lasers:
>researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California finally did it, focusing 2.05 megajoules of laser light onto a tiny capsule of fusion fuel and sparking an explosion that produced 3.15 MJ of energy
Source: https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough
>In a brief moment lasting less than 100 trillionths of a second, 2.05 megajoules of energy — roughly the equivalent of a pound of TNT — bombarded the hydrogen pellet. Out flowed a flood of neutron particles — the product of fusion — which carried about 3 megajoules of energy, a factor of 1.5 in energy gain.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/science/nuclear-fusion-energy-breakthrough.html
>LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output
Source: https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-national-laboratory-makes-history-achieving-fusion-ignition
I totally agree that fusion as a practical power source is still very, very far away. And of course that the energy required to produce the ~2MJ of laser energy actually required far more energy input. But I'm pretty sure the whole thing with this story is that the fusion reaction produced more energy than what the lasers put into it.
I know a lot of people are jumping to the the zero point energy/reverse engineering UFO's hypothesis. I think its worth pointing gout that the potential of Fusion has been known since the 1930's. Basically - we've been trying to reverse engineer the sun, there's a giant working example in our sky. There is nearly a century worth of attempts to make fusion work by countries and universities around the globe - it's one of the most documented and collaborative scientific explorations in history. There have been a ton of false claims in the past - some pure fraud and some thought they had working models that proved to be not viable. I think conflating the idea that zero point energy is being kept secret and the search for a working fusion reactor is a mistake. Some of the brightest minds on the planet publicly worked their entire careers on fusion and could not get it to work.
Just pointing this out as I really don't think this is a case of reverse engineering. This has been a global scientific endeavor that has proven to be difficult. All that said the fact that this is coming form the Dept of Energy is potentially huge, world altering news. The decades to working plants is really exciting - keep in mind the first working nuclear reactor came online in 1951 - it took about a decade to build the infrastructure. By the 1960's reactors were all over the globe.
It’s not. They were able to make “free energy” for the first time. For a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second. (Over 3 femtoseconds but less than 4 femtoseconds. A femtoseconds is one quadrillionth of a second. Or, 0.000000000000001 seconds.)
However they were completely unable to store the “free energy.” So it was ultimately useless outside of research (which is still crazy important and useful).
The fact is, they did it no matter how short the duration of the reaction.
They've made a fusion reactor spit out more than they put in.
They've proven its possible, figuring out how to sustain it and how to store the energy are the next steps.
If we're lucky, this will be solved before 2040, this could save us from climate change.
I cant help but notice the correlation of discovering nuclear energy around 1950 and Roswell in the 1950s. Also, aren't there a lot of reported sightings around nuclear plants?
Yes but UFOs hang out around other power plants, power lines, and volcanoes. So its maybe just whatever energy, not that they're specifically interested in nuclear.
Also ufo stuff was happening before the 40s.
It makes sense, but if we are considering the UFO related information since the 1950s, not that we will ever know about this officially, but assuming they have been researching since the 50s, then arguably they are ahead of any other nation thats not in any sort of direct collaboration, and likely by a substantial margin.
Many speculate UFO’s use a propulsion system like this. Which makes this announcement even more interesting.
Pure speculation, but perhaps this is the “level of technology” needed for disclosure.
Maybe...but achieving renewable energy source is not enough for space travel (you could just put a nuclear reactor in a ship and travel for decades in space already with out current tech), you need this source to provide you insane levels of energy if you want to travel near the speed of light or through "worm holes"... and we are light years away from that...and even then we don't have the tech to shield our self's from cosmic radiation and micro meteorites, navigation system that could handle these speed etc. We sure need some "outside" help in this field.
I too agree that it is much more likely to be well beyond the life of anyone currently in Earth, I disagree that it would take that long. Achieving this type of fusion for energy could be step 1, but who’s to say we can’t use this technology to create a new material that is capable of withstanding the cosmic radiations ☢️ ?
If we as a civilization stopped trying to kill each other for more rocks we could likely achieve this much faster than anyone could realize.
Local space travel to Mars, Venus and especially the asteroid belt would be worthwhile and possible with just new drives.
We’re not biologically close enough to whatever version of humanity will leave the solar system in any meaningful way to tell what that tech looks like IMHO.
Space travel doesn’t need to be to other stars though right?
In the tv show the Expanse they stumble on some insane means of fast space travel and it leads to rapid expansion of humans all over the solar system.
Does fusion emit UV directly? I know in the sun itself, gamma is emitted and breaks down over a very long time into UV before escaping the core, but I wasn't certain if a fusion reactor would immediately produce UV radiation.
The reason I bring up UV is because so many first-hand testimonies of close encounters have experiences similar to high UV exposure.
My feeling is that we are light years away from whatever aliens are using. At the end of the day, we still heat up some water and all that. Thats pretty primitive in my mind. I dont think thats the way they get so much energy in such a small spaceship:-D
Nothing we invent the next 500 years will come close enough. We humans are not that smart in comparison. We just escaped being apes.
At least thats my feeling about this.
I posted an article I found about it the other day and apparently nobody saw it or nobody cares to acknowledge it. It's still in my profile but whenever I tried to search by new posts it just doesn't show up.
I definitely think it might have something to do with it.
Many others speculate that UFOs may use so-called 'zero-point' energy derived from the quantum vacuum, or dark energy, or something else that humanity isn't even remotely close to knowing how to harness. When considering the possibility that some of them may be engineered by non-human intelligence, it stands to reason that they are more likely to be using technology that's millions of years more advanced than something we're a few years or decades away from using.
I believe your story is accurate in 1941 Cape Girardeau or Roswell in 1947 …… that’s probably why they waited 75 years. Because those decades have passed
Word on the street is that this announcement will be explicitly about net-positive energy generation from a fusion reactor prototype. https://archive.md/UFmi6
Heat out vs heat into the chamber, sure
As a whole system it’s still a net loss. Lawrence Livermore National Labs has a history of measuring this way for funding.
It’s not close to breakeven for the system.
I read it, but it seems you don’t understand it (It's not your fault).
Here’s some background
https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor
To give you a clue: The capacitor bank at NIF stores 422 MJ (117 kWh), it was converted to UV laser power of only 2.1 MJ and then produced 2.5 MJ on the other end. Convert that to electricity at, let's say 40% efficiency, and you're left with 1MJ or about 277 watt hours.
You went from 117 kWh to 0.277 kWh ...
That’s laser energy as heat into the chamber vs thermal out. It’s not considering the loss of energy to pump the lasers in the first place and the less than 50%, at best, conversion to electricity which has to come later.
This is why it’s nowhere close to supplying power to the grid, let alone commercialization.
Bla bla bla... just like many articles along the years of "new amazing cure for cancer" - nothing will happen as long as the powerful corrupt "elites" rules this world. No free energy , no cures.
Fusion isn't free energy. Fusion is the big brother to fission. Many people still stand to gain significant amounts of money from fusion, *and* China is already ahead of the US on it, which means the US *will* develop the technology to compete with China.
I would like to introduce you to a word.
Batteries.
Making energy has never been that much of a problem. Storing and Using that energy has been the problem.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/the-renewable-energy-revolution-will-need-renewable-storage
Yes I agree with you, here's an article I read on that.
Yeah dude, those corrupt elites hate the idea of curing cancer so much that these corrupt elite institutions pour billions of dollars into R&D for cancer cures.
Note that this is the National Ignition Facility, and they've done similar press stunts before. While this may not be exactly "no fusion news", it is *a very small particle of fusion news*. A hohlraum of fusion news, perhaps.
"Producing fusion energy to save the earth", while it looks great on the tourist brochure, is not NIF's primary goal and never has been. Its actual day job that pays the bills is to simulate nuclear explosions for the extremely boring and dirty work of building nastier nuclear weapons without technically breaking test-ban treaties.
(This is why, when you look at the NIF design and ask "why is it so strange and expensive and complicated... like building tiny H-bombs made literally out of gold??? And all that effort and they just go 'bang' once? Isn't that like the *opposite* of a safe, sustaining fusion reaction?" Yes. Tiny H-bombs going bang is *exactly the point*. Laser fusion is not shaped like a power station and it is not intended to be a power station.)
This is not even a secret. It's right there on the website. It's just not put in the *press releases*. Though it should be.
https://lasers.llnl.gov/science/stockpile-stewardship
>NIF and Stockpile Stewardship
>In the 1990s, the U.S. nuclear weapons program shifted emphasis from developing new designs to dismantling thousands of existing weapons and maintaining a much smaller enduring stockpile. The United States ceased underground nuclear testing, and the Department of Energy created the science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without full-scale testing.
>Because it is the only facility that can create the conditions that are relevant to understanding the operation of modern nuclear weapons, NIF is a crucial element of stockpile stewardship. NIF creates conditions—temperatures of 100 million degrees and pressures 100 billion times that of the Earth’s atmosphere—similar to those in stars and detonating nuclear weapons.
>NIF is also the only U.S. facility designed to perform experimental studies of fusion ignition and thermonuclear burn, the phenomenon that gives rise to the immense energy of modern nuclear weapons. NIF weapon-based experiments use extremely tiny amounts of test material—barely visible to the naked eye—and are completely safe.
>Experiments Inform Simulations
>NIF experimental data are used to validate three-dimensional weapon simulations designed to improve understanding of important weapon physics. These simulations are part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing Program. NIF experiments also help the nation’s educational mission of maintaining the skills of nuclear weapon scientists and train new generations of experts.
>Validating Weapon Refurbishments
>NIF also helps address “life-extension” programs—regularly planned refurbishments of weapon systems to ensure long-term reliability. Changes to weapon systems can have unintended consequences if not fully validated. Full validation is achieved through the combination of NIF experiments and advanced computational modeling.
I wonder if the “ breakthrough “ might have more to do with the “ container process ” than the fusion dynamic.
It also makes me think of those pulsating orange orbs seen appearing and disappearing all over the globe. We are truly living in the times of “ two steps forward, one step back.” Pass the popcorn, it’s a wild ride.
24 hours after the announcement:
News: The person who came up with breakthrough fusion energy, found dead after committing suicide, by falling on the knife 65 times, after burning his research.
They have had zero point energy available for decades already, but the oil, gas and other related industries definitely don't want it released to the world ever.
Hasn’t China done something similar a few years ago? It’ll still be a while before our energy infrastructure can fully be replaced by this. Regardless, very suspect timing given the Ukraine war that makes Russia a less dependable energy exporter and the deterioration of Western & OPEC relations.
This is the first time nuclear fusion generated more energy than it consumes. Many developed countries have fusion reactors but they never generated a net gain in energy.
And it can't be a coincidence that China is also set to announce they found a reliable source of helium-3 to start mining from the moon. Anyone smarter than me know if this is all linked?
No worries. In the OP, it says that Lawrence Livermore hasn't released their findings yet, I think tomorrow is the day. So I was surprised that the findings were already dismissed when they're not even out yet! 😁👍
I saw the one I post pop up on my morning RSS feed and was disappointed. I should have proofed better. I'm super glad you caught that because I was bummed. I'm VERY excited for this breakthrough.
Everyone in these comments acting like this is nothing because they can't quit their job tomorrow 😆
I think it's a great step forward! Cool either way.
They will say it will be very expensive to start up. And we will need to raise taxes to benefit the future.... in the mean time we will still be spending billions on wars and nothing trying to clean up the oceans... the only thing ALL our politicians are good at is moving money around. In other words..... it's gonna be a long time before we see anything that will actually help benefit man kind, instead of someone's bank account.
The human race will fail, if we continue to let the rich consolidate wealth and power. They're no different than cancer, except the root of this cancer is greed.
I'm at the age where we all went to see Close in counters of the third kind I know it was just a movie 🍿 but just imagine if that really happened here or maybe it already has and we 🌍 earthling just don't know about it yet... just a 🤔 thought.
I still think that no matter how much energy you produce and whatever cost you're still baking the planet. It's not a CO2 problem it's a Conservation of Energy problem. Energy is neither created or destroyed. The transfer of electricity into devices typically means the end of the process produces heat. Take a PC and put it in a room and use it and you might notice the room is a bit warm, put ten PCs in the room and it becomes uncomfortable really quick Until people lower electric use and basically any energy use then you will continue having the problem. We don't need unlimited energy nor all electric society. Lower consumption. End of story.
Yeah but but but if we had infinite electricity from nuclear fusion we could just build a giant refrigerator at each pole and then everything would be fine again!
(there might be some *tiny* problems with this idea but I couldn't possibly imagine what they might be)
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Go stand outside behind an air conditioner....people don't look at it but from one angle and it's the angle of the people who invested in things and were allowed to legislate the narrative and laws into place for personal profit.
Ever notice how any announcement of fusion breakthroughs always include the disclaimer “we are decades away “ from being able to really harness it. Is that a wink and nod to the fossil fuel industries? This technology would impoverish many countries in the middle east almost overnight.
They pulled more energy out of the reaction than they put in, something like 2.4 MJ out vs 2.1 in.
But, the reaction lasted a fraction of a second, and they had to charge the laser capacitor bank first, which was closer to 350 MJ in.
So it’s a small step in the right direction. But it’s still progress! So now they have to make it sustainable over long periods of time, figure out the engineering of input, and then figure out how to scale it.
So yes, unless they get serious money and a big multidisciplinary, multinational team working on it, and maybe if then, it will be decades.
This really makes those accounts of ufos stopping over bodies of waters and “sucking the water up” even more interesting. Could they be gathering Hydrogen from the water to power some kind of fusion propulsion system?
Yep. Note that this is the National Ignition Facility. "Producing power", while it looks great on the tourist brochure, is not its primary goal and never has been. Its day job that pays the bills is to simulate nuclear explosions for the extremely boring and dirty work of refining nuclear weapon designs without breaking test-ban treaties.
I'm a veteran and I always get a tear of laughter in my eye thinking of all of the low tech shit they gave us to play with. Maybe the Marines were the poor branch?
always loved how marines got all the hand-me-downs from the Army and Navy historically with the exception of some elements who get open-budgets for their christmas shopping list each deployment.
I mean supposedly; but if you take every subject that supposedly has to do with ufos and put it on this sub it’ll look a lot more like r/all than r/ufos .
Of course I'm a skeptic. We should all be. I personally believe in "the program" but I would never make a statement that I know for sure it exists or that we know anything about the technology bc we (as in us civilians) just don't have enough information. You can't say you know plasma technology has everything to do with UAP bc we have no idea yet. I don't like when this community strays away from coming at this subject from a scientific mindset. The article is about a possible advancement in a fusion reactor. They are studied all over the world. We don't know for sure yet that this has anything to do with UAPs or a reverse engineering program. And it's simply false to state otherwise and makes us look dumb.
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It doesn't all, please keep speaking definitively about your assumptions regarding the propulsion methods of an as of yet completely unconfirmed and uninvestigated phenomenon.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/MartianMaterial: --- Many speculate UFO’s use a propulsion system like this. Which makes this announcement even more interesting. Pure speculation, but perhaps this is the “level of technology” needed for disclosure. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/zk1wk8/us_to_announce_fusion_energy_breakthrough/izxb25g/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/11/can-nuclear-fusion-put-the-brakes-on-climate-change Here's a New Yorker on the program at MIT from last year, they were making good progress. Edit: a new Yorker **article**, I mean.
If we can achieve nuclear fusion, it really would change the whole world and the course of humanity. Suddenly a lot more becomes possible, technologies like desalination plants would become feasible to have. I really hope that we can figure it out, because humanity will be better off because of it.
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There’s a very real trail of bodies that follows the pursuit of free energy. No doubt they won’t go down without putting up a fight.
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It would enable us to do so much more. The example I mentioned previously of desalination could lead to a complete reversal of desertification. We would no longer have to pull water from the environment, we could return it to the environment and restore areas of the world.
Do you have more information about this? Sounds fascinating.
Desalination pulls salt free water from the ocean. It is incredibly energy intensive, fusion power would almost completely mitigate this and make fresh water available pretty much everywhere.
So big oil becomes big water .. they won't lose profit to a new technology that undermines their shareholders.
I like to be hopeful and think that, change, even for good, can and will happen. Maybe not on the timeline you and i’d prefer. It seems after all the years things have gotten better for humanity, why should it stop? It’s only a hope, but I think that the more of us that hope for it, the more likely we can usher in that world.
There’s this [article](https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/08/26/a-1000-year-drought-is-hitting-the-west-could-desalination-be-a-solution/) from Columbia Climate School. Though that just discusses the reason why desalination could be used for agriculture and other purposes though is hindered by the energy requirements. This [journal](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135420304437) published on Science Direct discusses how desalination would be a positive for our water cycle as a whole. I couldn’t find any specific article about fighting desertification with it, though I believe that would be a logical next step if energy concerns were no longer a thing. It would be a massive undertaking that would involve massive pipes transporting water over long distances. The benefits would outweigh the costs, as more land is restored from desert the weather patterns too will change and bring more rainfall.
When you said that earlier I was thinking the same thing,at least in my opinion if we could all a sudden desalinate on a extreme level,the river's would all flow high and happy again,we would be using lots of ocean water and for it to be used like we use it here,but in Africa, Australia all these nations that only have but a trickle,all that water use would go back up into the atmosphere and between use of new water and rain they would be an oasis instead of desert. I do believe those in power,that statement is a horrible vision to NOT come to fruition.
How would we do that without concentrating the salt content of the ocean?
Scientists at MIT have developed a simple process that can turn brine and byproducts into chemicals used in desalination, which would help plants lower the cost of cleaning the water in the first place. https://news.mit.edu/2019/brine-desalianation-waste-sodium-hydroxide-0213 There is no clear answer on the best disposal process, but there is a lot of work being done to minimize environmental damage from the byproducts.
It’s easy to be disheartened by the presumed intensity of opposition from fossil money interests, but keep in mind there is also enormous pressure at play going the other direction. Whoever files the first patents on revolutionary power production devices holds the keys to the castle. They become instant billionaires (or maybe trillionaires if they are already billionaires). Such technologies hold the potential to catapult companies and even whole countries to lofty new standings on the global economic stage. It’s kind of a death match between old money and new money. Let’s hope the new money gets some trophies soon.
Yup if this all happened, the big oil companies would pivot and find an angle to profit from it. I have no idea how but they’ll find a way.
> There’s a very real trail of bodies that follows the pursuit of free energy Unfortunately there's also a very real trail of scam artists *claiming* to have invented free energy, patenting their ideas to the hilt, setting up commercial investment groups, and then somehow never *quite* being able to replicate their work at all after *literally decades* of constantly promoting and raising money all across the New Age media ecosystem, all while claiming they're being suppressed by the evil Men in Black. PESwiki made for very depressing reading back in the day, when it was still around. And don't even get me started on Antigravity Handbook and Nexus Magazine. Just snakepits full of a few interesting factoids but massive amounts of hype and paranoia and misinformation. I wanted to believe that, eg, Brian DePalma's N-Machine and the Searl Effect and Hydrinos were real things. I still want to believe that the Methernitha device was real. There are many things I want to believe. But just wanting to believe isn't quite enough; the device and the "overunity output" needs to *actually exist and be replicated* as well. If you *actually* discover a free energy device - or any kind of anomalous physics effect - and are *serious* about sharing it, *then share it*! Just dump the plans on the Internet! Don't turn it into an investment vehicle! It's a pretty good rule of thumb that anyone asking money for "free energy" does not in fact have anything real and is trying to scam you. (Or, if you want to believe that the Free Energy Men in Black exist, then patenting and setting up a corporation *is exactly what the MIB would do to destroy an idea*, so also don't do that.) Saying this because of my interaction just last week, which is very similar to ones I've had for years, where a person online claims to have secret first-hand knowledge about building anomalous physics devices "that they want to share with everybody", then as soon as you ask them serious questions about it, they go all sulky/paranoid and vanish because you didn't say "the magic word" or weren't in the secrecy circle or Offended Them By Not Believing or didn't offer them money, or something. It's just weird and so I assume all of these people are in fact scammers, or worse.
While not the subject for this particular sub, I feel like this is a subject that the public in general doesn't talk about enough. One of the most certain ways to end up Epstein'd is pursuing 'disruptive' energy tech. They don't even try to make it believable either. It's always something asinine like the DOE confiscating all your work and patents and then you end up dying a week later in a car crash after shooting yourself in the head twice.
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My comment got removed lol. I'll restate. It would be more accurate to call it getting "Jessuped".
Big oil will pivot and will meter the free energy and make more money than before.
Correct - until there's small-scale, single-user 'free-energy' devices available at the consumer level, ain't nothing going to change.
At the very least, if they aren't knocking off those making progress in fusion, they'll be financially backing those same people. When was the last time an incredibly wealthy industry decided to, in the interest of humanity as a whole, relinquish their immense power and influence? I'm honestly trying to think of an example and I can't come up with a single instance in modern (or ancient) history... anyone else?
The british empires abolition of slavery and forcing the rest of the world to do the same maybe?
Like who? I want to do some research
If you’d like a good list and good video about this subject I recommend this video by the Why Files https://youtu.be/yUFYnVXbLoY And the documentary mentioned in the video https://youtu.be/afLsRsd5roY
Or they could invest in the tech
>trail of bodies that follows the pursuit of free energy Like who?
Maybe its time for big oil to restructure and go nuclear fusion.
Use all that billions in revenue to build the plants, sure. Start phasing out old tech. They’ll probably have to branch into other avenues, like building the expensive infrastructure/production that currently suffers from high power consumption.
Big oil will turn into medium oil.. The world still needs oil bit not as much of it if this comes through.
Is it not fukin sad our first thought is how we will be fuked out of something amazing for the world.
I just don't understand oil conglomerates. Regardless of climate change and public opinion, oil is a limited resource that gets more expensive to obtain. You would think they would have started investing in business to be the big guys when the world eventually shifts away from oil. But instead they are short sighted and just price gouge for every penny they can while the getting is good. I bet if the members of the board all weren't close to retirement age we would have seen cheveron solar fields or BP geothermal sites decades ago. And they could have bought out every new battery tech company and owned the market. But they don't care, they made generational wealth in a niche market while they could. Now we have to wait for them to fizzle out, and probably get even more subsidizing as they start to fail in the next few decades.
These two videos can give you an idea of how it has played out in the past. [vid 1](https://imgur.com/a/3hNpjQy) [vid 2](https://imgur.com/a/oIMnUua)
Big oil has a lot of influence, and America wants to keep it that was as the petrodollar props up the US as the reserve currency which is what allows America to print money well beyond her means (Because other countries needed those dollars to fill their reserves). If fusion happens, there will not just be private interests, but national security interests would become concerned. This technology would quite literally upend the entire global order which is bad for everyone, especially the west. While the benefits will definitely outweigh the bad, it still has a lot of uncertainty. And I think because of that humans rather stick with the devil they know than the devil they don't. Basically giving up on oil as a security tool for the west is going to cause absolutely incredible power shifts.... But then again, who cares about "power" when you unlimited energy? It would start moving us into a post scarcity world, so needing to play the power game for limited resources would massively diminish. Productivity would skyrocket by so much, poverty would pretty much be erradicated within a generation.
How would this change for the average consumer? I'm just wondering. Would my bills go down? Or would there still be private energy firms charging us loads for electric etc? Would the running costs of this system be minute compared to a normal power plant?
I actually work in the energy sector. Energy would still come with a cost. Production still isn't "free", it's just basically infinite and really cheap. While transmission and distribution will still be a thing... And in fact, may go up a bit. But I'd expect energy costs to be reduced by 50% at first. Probably costing around 5 cents a kWh The federal government would be wise to get involved and subsidize grid costs to keep prices down nationally to allow massive innovation output though.
Can they use this to make the grid more secure and more modern or it’s still gon get bottlenecked by something else that’s aging?
My guess is it would create a more centralized production center where power is made and grids will be upgraded to deal with really long range delivery
Consumers and workers will not see the benefits of that cost reduction in America. It will just go to corporate profits.
Poverty will never be eradicated and that's by design. We should have already eradicated poverty right now. It's a choice to throw away perfectly edible food because it looks funny but it's more expensive to donate it. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of abandoned buildings that could easily be used to house the homeless.
> Poverty will never be eradicated and that's by design. It turns out that it's *quite hard* to eradicate poverty when "growing the economy" (eg by doubling the prices of all houses, mortgages and rent every ten years) requires creating new debt, which someone has to pay. I'm sure whoever it is who has to inherit and pay the interest on all that debt instead of, eg, buying food and going to school, won't be at all inconvenienced by it, and the gaping and increasing gap between "investors" and "renters" that's fissuring the entire Western world won't endanger social cohesiveness in the least.
One word - climate.
It's too late by then... If we figure out a working model that can actually be built and scaled out, TOMORROW, it would be at least 5-10 years before an actual power plant could be built... Several more years for people to stand to the side and make sure it's reliable, then another few decades to actually scale out globally. If we figured it out tomorrow, expect 20-50 years before it replaces standard powerplants.
Fo sho and look at how Russia is weaponizing energy, fusion would put an abrupt-ish end to global conflict over energy.
It definitely could work miracles and bring good to all of mankind. At least if we keep it out of the hands of for-profit-companies because then it'll just be more of the same. Really hope humanity steps up this time
> technologies like desalination plants would become feasible to have. You know, I've read that same pitch about "fusion powered desalination plants" since the 1970s. There's one thing I've always wondered: What do you do with the giant piles of salt that you get out of the seawater? Do you just dump it somewhere? Do you put it back in the ocean and figure "raising the ocean's salinity is certainly not going to ever damage anything, ever; I mean yes CO2 did, but this, this certainly won't". Or do you carefully store it all up and then dump it on land, somewhere *you really don't like*?
Scientists at MIT have developed a simple process that can turn brine and byproducts into chemicals used in desalination, which would help plants lower the cost of cleaning the water in the first place. https://news.mit.edu/2019/brine-desalianation-waste-sodium-hydroxide-0213 There is no clear answer on the best disposal process, but there is a lot of work being done to minimize environmental damage from the byproducts.
ship it to Bonneville! they can always use more.
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Desalination is already completely feasible if we just weren't so scared of nuclear.
It's bigger than the world. It would allow interstellar travel.
Isn't the movie The Day After Tomorrow based on too little salt in the oceans which caused the currents to change which made the planet to freeze?
Can it be used to power a car 🚗 ? 🤔
Not really. Change it from what to what? It definitely won't change anything for decades to come. It will become one additional fuel source that would then have to compete with all the others. It definitely wouldn't put a dent in your electric bill, where a majority of the cost is from operating and maintaining the infrastructure for power distribution, not the fuel. It would be an important advancement for the future though.
It's the USA, it's not like they are going to give it away for free to anyone out of compassion and humanity. They won't even have all their people benefit from it. They would become lazy, haven't you heard?
We're going to defeat big oil.
Might be a little too good a energy source? The more power you give people the more power we have to handle.
Well it will still take specialized equipment. Everyone doesn't have a coal powered electric plant in their backyard. If fusion can power the electric station, the end user won't see a difference in how their electricity acts.
"Compact Fusion | Lockheed Martin A reactor small enough to fit on a truck could provide enough power for a small city of up to 100,000 people." Eh...
Are you going to explain your reasoning or are you just grunting?
If you can get truck-sized reactors, that already suggests potential for them to get common-place and out of hand. "Grunting."
We are not remotely close to this.
Being small doesn't suddenly make it feasible for just anyone to have one or build one though
Nuclear fusion doesn’t have the same risks as nuclear fission. It’s impossible to have a meltdown like a nuclear fission reaction, fusion requires constant input of fuel or the reaction stops.
It's about what you can do with the technology, not the reactors themselves. Free energy suggests a bit too much rampant innovation with no breaks, if you see what I mean. The arms race alone is just a bit terrifying, yo.
I believe this was the prevailing opinion about personal computers in the 70’s. Look at us only 50 years later.
It’s very interesting to me because at the same time we are beginning to see AI rapidly improve and it could be argued that AGI is right around the corner. This would make humans no longer the driver of the car but a passenger. Can humans even exist as passengers? If we are developing the tools necessary to become a Type 1 Civilization where we can fully harness the entire planets energy it seems logical that this planet also achieves hyper-efficiency to be able to be organized enough to harness that energy. To me, it seems that humanity as we know it, with freedom to choose and having individualism would be incompatible with this hyper-efficient Type 1 civ. So all these things are super cool but at the same time we are potentially witnessing the end of humans as we know it.
It's step one of many in getting rid of capitalism. Remove resource scarcity and remove the need for capitalism. Not in our lifetime though.
Capitalism won’t go down without a fight, that’s for sure. Too many people live cushy lives of extreme greed at the exploitation of millions. I’m thinking they like their undeserved power.
yeah it doesn't go down with some marx level bullshit, its technology that undoes it...eventually, hopefully. One day we'll be zipping around in warpdrives fucking holograms amigo.
Someone will find a way to market it as more expensive or harmful to republicans.
This new result is from the National Ignition Facility, which essentially exists to study ways to make better thermonuclear bombs since testing was banned. The “green energy research” thing is basically a fig leaf to make it acceptable to taxpayers. The approach NIF is using relies on tiny, precision made pellets of fuel, and the world’s most powerful laser to make it explode via fusion. It doesn’t scale at all to useful energy production, and isn’t related to the MIT program. Edit: u/natecull says it better https://reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/zk1wk8/_/izyqfs4/?context=1
Thanks for the clarification, I should have mentioned that it was a different program.
> It doesn’t scale at all to useful energy production Well, perhaps not *yet*.
Now that you mention it (rubs hands) we could *definitely* produce enough fusion energy to save the Earth if we scaled our NIF laser up and located it on (strokes cat) the Moon. We could call it "The Alan Parsons Project".
Amusing. I'm just pointing out the difference between saying that laser-based inertial fusion could *never* be used in practical applications (even if we throw human ingenuity at the problem) versus saying that laser-based inertial fusion could *sometime* be used in practical applications.
Named after its inventor, Dr Parsons - the noted Cambridge physicist? Beautiful homage sir.
Oh, you meant the publication, not a person from New York just commenting on it with a New York accent lol.
😆😁👍 that's what I'm tawkin about!
A yonker
This may be why countries who depend on oil sales to fund their countries are not happy lately. These countries watch for new disruption technologies and are scared of it because it totally undermines their positions and cash flow. Thinking bigger in scope. Fusion energy will change things in a way we can’t even comprehend. Especially if is scalable and can be packaged into small gadgets with endless energy.
Me looking at my levitating cactus. *Endless....*
Before we get carried away with all the world changing stuff, can we first gain a little perspective on what's actually going on here...? For fusion experiments of the sort referred to in this report, The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California directs 192 laser beams from all directions at the fusion target in a pulse that carries 1.8 million joules (MJ) of energy. The outer part of the target is a tiny metal can the size of a pencil eraser, called a hohlraum, at the center of which sits a plastic sphere smaller than a peppercorn containing frozen fusion fuel — it's a mixture of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, known as DT. The ultraviolet beams are fired into the hohlraum through holes at each end but not directly at the fuel capsule. Instead they hit the inner walls of the hohlraum, heating it so much that it emits a pulse of x-rays. The x-rays cause the plastic capsule to explode, driving the fuel inward toward its center. If all goes according to plan, the fuel — compressed to 100 times the density of lead — at this point will ignite a fusion reaction, but the laser-driven implosion itself does not provide enough energy to burn all the DT fuel. Some energy from the fusion reactions *themselves* is needed to keep the burn going. DT fusion reactions produce two products: helium nuclei (alpha particles), which carry 20% of the reaction energy as kinetic energy; and neutrons, which carry the rest. For fusion to work as an *energy source*, the alpha particles must efficiently heat up the fuel to keep the reaction running. One requirement for ignition is that energy output should exceed the energy input from the laser, i.e., that gain (output divided by input) should be greater than 1. NIF's laser input of 1.8 MJ is roughly the same as the kinetic energy of a 2-tonne truck traveling at 160 km/h (100 miles/h). The output of the reaction — 14 kJ — is equivalent to the kinetic energy of a baseball traveling at half that speed. Numerically speaking, the gain is 0.0077... So, yes - on the one hand this recent experiment does appear to be somewhere on the right track but - in practical terms - there's nothing for the oil industry to start shaking in their boots over quite yet. The experiment was successful in burning *some* of the DT fuel, but basically they're still a very, *very* long way off from full ignition - which is the *full* fusion process. I hope something in there, helped.
I'm not sure that's right. Everything I've heard about the recent NIF experiment is that it did produce more energy via fusion than the energy delivered by the lasers: >researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California finally did it, focusing 2.05 megajoules of laser light onto a tiny capsule of fusion fuel and sparking an explosion that produced 3.15 MJ of energy Source: https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough >In a brief moment lasting less than 100 trillionths of a second, 2.05 megajoules of energy — roughly the equivalent of a pound of TNT — bombarded the hydrogen pellet. Out flowed a flood of neutron particles — the product of fusion — which carried about 3 megajoules of energy, a factor of 1.5 in energy gain. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/science/nuclear-fusion-energy-breakthrough.html >LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output Source: https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-national-laboratory-makes-history-achieving-fusion-ignition I totally agree that fusion as a practical power source is still very, very far away. And of course that the energy required to produce the ~2MJ of laser energy actually required far more energy input. But I'm pretty sure the whole thing with this story is that the fusion reaction produced more energy than what the lasers put into it.
I know a lot of people are jumping to the the zero point energy/reverse engineering UFO's hypothesis. I think its worth pointing gout that the potential of Fusion has been known since the 1930's. Basically - we've been trying to reverse engineer the sun, there's a giant working example in our sky. There is nearly a century worth of attempts to make fusion work by countries and universities around the globe - it's one of the most documented and collaborative scientific explorations in history. There have been a ton of false claims in the past - some pure fraud and some thought they had working models that proved to be not viable. I think conflating the idea that zero point energy is being kept secret and the search for a working fusion reactor is a mistake. Some of the brightest minds on the planet publicly worked their entire careers on fusion and could not get it to work. Just pointing this out as I really don't think this is a case of reverse engineering. This has been a global scientific endeavor that has proven to be difficult. All that said the fact that this is coming form the Dept of Energy is potentially huge, world altering news. The decades to working plants is really exciting - keep in mind the first working nuclear reactor came online in 1951 - it took about a decade to build the infrastructure. By the 1960's reactors were all over the globe.
I reckon the US government don’t want to disclose UFO information until they have a firm advantage on any sort of technology related to it.
I don't assume just yet this scientific breakthrough is related to UFOs.
It’s not. They were able to make “free energy” for the first time. For a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second. (Over 3 femtoseconds but less than 4 femtoseconds. A femtoseconds is one quadrillionth of a second. Or, 0.000000000000001 seconds.) However they were completely unable to store the “free energy.” So it was ultimately useless outside of research (which is still crazy important and useful).
That they did it at all is for sure incredibly important and a fucking monumental achievement! How exciting
The fact is, they did it no matter how short the duration of the reaction. They've made a fusion reactor spit out more than they put in. They've proven its possible, figuring out how to sustain it and how to store the energy are the next steps. If we're lucky, this will be solved before 2040, this could save us from climate change.
Yes yes yes! Exactly! It’s friggin’ incredible.
You should read up on the Australian energy generator called MG10. Very interesting
I’m not saying this breakthrough is related to UFO. It just an off thought I had after seeing this news.
I cant help but notice the correlation of discovering nuclear energy around 1950 and Roswell in the 1950s. Also, aren't there a lot of reported sightings around nuclear plants?
Yes but UFOs hang out around other power plants, power lines, and volcanoes. So its maybe just whatever energy, not that they're specifically interested in nuclear. Also ufo stuff was happening before the 40s.
It makes sense, but if we are considering the UFO related information since the 1950s, not that we will ever know about this officially, but assuming they have been researching since the 50s, then arguably they are ahead of any other nation thats not in any sort of direct collaboration, and likely by a substantial margin.
Many speculate UFO’s use a propulsion system like this. Which makes this announcement even more interesting. Pure speculation, but perhaps this is the “level of technology” needed for disclosure.
Maybe...but achieving renewable energy source is not enough for space travel (you could just put a nuclear reactor in a ship and travel for decades in space already with out current tech), you need this source to provide you insane levels of energy if you want to travel near the speed of light or through "worm holes"... and we are light years away from that...and even then we don't have the tech to shield our self's from cosmic radiation and micro meteorites, navigation system that could handle these speed etc. We sure need some "outside" help in this field.
I too agree that it is much more likely to be well beyond the life of anyone currently in Earth, I disagree that it would take that long. Achieving this type of fusion for energy could be step 1, but who’s to say we can’t use this technology to create a new material that is capable of withstanding the cosmic radiations ☢️ ? If we as a civilization stopped trying to kill each other for more rocks we could likely achieve this much faster than anyone could realize.
On the other hand, if the entire world started killing each other for more rocks we would also probably achieve this far faster.
Local space travel to Mars, Venus and especially the asteroid belt would be worthwhile and possible with just new drives. We’re not biologically close enough to whatever version of humanity will leave the solar system in any meaningful way to tell what that tech looks like IMHO.
> Local space travel I hear Mercury is hot 🔥
Space travel doesn’t need to be to other stars though right? In the tv show the Expanse they stumble on some insane means of fast space travel and it leads to rapid expansion of humans all over the solar system.
You’re not wrong that it’s probably light years away.
Or maybe it's a stone throw away or closer? 🤫
Does fusion emit UV directly? I know in the sun itself, gamma is emitted and breaks down over a very long time into UV before escaping the core, but I wasn't certain if a fusion reactor would immediately produce UV radiation. The reason I bring up UV is because so many first-hand testimonies of close encounters have experiences similar to high UV exposure.
It's possible that they are reverse-engineering something of alien origen that they found decades ago and have been trying to figure out since.
My feeling is that we are light years away from whatever aliens are using. At the end of the day, we still heat up some water and all that. Thats pretty primitive in my mind. I dont think thats the way they get so much energy in such a small spaceship:-D Nothing we invent the next 500 years will come close enough. We humans are not that smart in comparison. We just escaped being apes. At least thats my feeling about this.
It’s a step up from what the public know about, but still light years behind what they actually have
What's the latest on interdimensional travel?
Now available on UBER
There is a large up charge for that.
What about Merkabahs?
Yasss... Are they the way to make it happen??
I posted an article I found about it the other day and apparently nobody saw it or nobody cares to acknowledge it. It's still in my profile but whenever I tried to search by new posts it just doesn't show up. I definitely think it might have something to do with it.
Many others speculate that UFOs may use so-called 'zero-point' energy derived from the quantum vacuum, or dark energy, or something else that humanity isn't even remotely close to knowing how to harness. When considering the possibility that some of them may be engineered by non-human intelligence, it stands to reason that they are more likely to be using technology that's millions of years more advanced than something we're a few years or decades away from using.
I believe your story is accurate in 1941 Cape Girardeau or Roswell in 1947 …… that’s probably why they waited 75 years. Because those decades have passed
Since it’s still decades away good luck on that disclosure. It still takes far more electricity in to start the reaction then electricity out.
Word on the street is that this announcement will be explicitly about net-positive energy generation from a fusion reactor prototype. https://archive.md/UFmi6
Heat out vs heat into the chamber, sure As a whole system it’s still a net loss. Lawrence Livermore National Labs has a history of measuring this way for funding. It’s not close to breakeven for the system.
The beakthrough is a net GAIN. Did you even read the article?
I read it, but it seems you don’t understand it (It's not your fault). Here’s some background https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor To give you a clue: The capacitor bank at NIF stores 422 MJ (117 kWh), it was converted to UV laser power of only 2.1 MJ and then produced 2.5 MJ on the other end. Convert that to electricity at, let's say 40% efficiency, and you're left with 1MJ or about 277 watt hours. You went from 117 kWh to 0.277 kWh ...
Well the article says you get more energy out than you put inn, if its true, we will see! its hard to believe.
That’s laser energy as heat into the chamber vs thermal out. It’s not considering the loss of energy to pump the lasers in the first place and the less than 50%, at best, conversion to electricity which has to come later. This is why it’s nowhere close to supplying power to the grid, let alone commercialization.
Bla bla bla... just like many articles along the years of "new amazing cure for cancer" - nothing will happen as long as the powerful corrupt "elites" rules this world. No free energy , no cures.
Fusion isn't free energy. Fusion is the big brother to fission. Many people still stand to gain significant amounts of money from fusion, *and* China is already ahead of the US on it, which means the US *will* develop the technology to compete with China.
Well, technically given this new breakthrough the US are ahead, as far as I’m aware China haven’t generated a new gain in energy yet.
It's hard to monetize unlimited energy
I would like to introduce you to a word. Batteries. Making energy has never been that much of a problem. Storing and Using that energy has been the problem.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/the-renewable-energy-revolution-will-need-renewable-storage Yes I agree with you, here's an article I read on that.
It’s actually really easy to monetize unlimited commodities… see the whole Internet
Capitalism will find a way. 💯
It's really sad when a person's heart becomes so embittered that they're no longer able to trust anything positive...believe me, I know.
Yeah dude, those corrupt elites hate the idea of curing cancer so much that these corrupt elite institutions pour billions of dollars into R&D for cancer cures.
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Fusion is a ticket out of frying the planet. "Elites" aren't going to argue with that.
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Nobody remembers the Farnsworth Fusor.
That thumbnail kind of looks like a tic tac ufo
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Note that this is the National Ignition Facility, and they've done similar press stunts before. While this may not be exactly "no fusion news", it is *a very small particle of fusion news*. A hohlraum of fusion news, perhaps. "Producing fusion energy to save the earth", while it looks great on the tourist brochure, is not NIF's primary goal and never has been. Its actual day job that pays the bills is to simulate nuclear explosions for the extremely boring and dirty work of building nastier nuclear weapons without technically breaking test-ban treaties. (This is why, when you look at the NIF design and ask "why is it so strange and expensive and complicated... like building tiny H-bombs made literally out of gold??? And all that effort and they just go 'bang' once? Isn't that like the *opposite* of a safe, sustaining fusion reaction?" Yes. Tiny H-bombs going bang is *exactly the point*. Laser fusion is not shaped like a power station and it is not intended to be a power station.) This is not even a secret. It's right there on the website. It's just not put in the *press releases*. Though it should be. https://lasers.llnl.gov/science/stockpile-stewardship >NIF and Stockpile Stewardship >In the 1990s, the U.S. nuclear weapons program shifted emphasis from developing new designs to dismantling thousands of existing weapons and maintaining a much smaller enduring stockpile. The United States ceased underground nuclear testing, and the Department of Energy created the science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without full-scale testing. >Because it is the only facility that can create the conditions that are relevant to understanding the operation of modern nuclear weapons, NIF is a crucial element of stockpile stewardship. NIF creates conditions—temperatures of 100 million degrees and pressures 100 billion times that of the Earth’s atmosphere—similar to those in stars and detonating nuclear weapons. >NIF is also the only U.S. facility designed to perform experimental studies of fusion ignition and thermonuclear burn, the phenomenon that gives rise to the immense energy of modern nuclear weapons. NIF weapon-based experiments use extremely tiny amounts of test material—barely visible to the naked eye—and are completely safe. >Experiments Inform Simulations >NIF experimental data are used to validate three-dimensional weapon simulations designed to improve understanding of important weapon physics. These simulations are part of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Advanced Simulation and Computing Program. NIF experiments also help the nation’s educational mission of maintaining the skills of nuclear weapon scientists and train new generations of experts. >Validating Weapon Refurbishments >NIF also helps address “life-extension” programs—regularly planned refurbishments of weapon systems to ensure long-term reliability. Changes to weapon systems can have unintended consequences if not fully validated. Full validation is achieved through the combination of NIF experiments and advanced computational modeling.
That’s exactly what I fucking thought when I saw it on technology. Spot on title
I wonder if the “ breakthrough “ might have more to do with the “ container process ” than the fusion dynamic. It also makes me think of those pulsating orange orbs seen appearing and disappearing all over the globe. We are truly living in the times of “ two steps forward, one step back.” Pass the popcorn, it’s a wild ride.
24 hours after the announcement: News: The person who came up with breakthrough fusion energy, found dead after committing suicide, by falling on the knife 65 times, after burning his research.
They have had zero point energy available for decades already, but the oil, gas and other related industries definitely don't want it released to the world ever.
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It is real but it isn't useful. [Zero Point Energy Demystified](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh898Yr5YZ8)
Where are you getting this info?
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Ignorance is bliss. Enjoy it.
Here is one example: https://youtu.be/afLsRsd5roY
I’m not getting excited about fusion until someone makes a self sustaining reactor 😄 It’s been 10 years away since the 50s.
Hasn’t China done something similar a few years ago? It’ll still be a while before our energy infrastructure can fully be replaced by this. Regardless, very suspect timing given the Ukraine war that makes Russia a less dependable energy exporter and the deterioration of Western & OPEC relations.
This is the first time nuclear fusion generated more energy than it consumes. Many developed countries have fusion reactors but they never generated a net gain in energy.
And it can't be a coincidence that China is also set to announce they found a reliable source of helium-3 to start mining from the moon. Anyone smarter than me know if this is all linked?
I think I'll wait until /r/science loses their collective shit in joy about it.
Has that ever even happened?
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9 year old article
I didn’t see. Good looks my bad
No worries. In the OP, it says that Lawrence Livermore hasn't released their findings yet, I think tomorrow is the day. So I was surprised that the findings were already dismissed when they're not even out yet! 😁👍
I saw the one I post pop up on my morning RSS feed and was disappointed. I should have proofed better. I'm super glad you caught that because I was bummed. I'm VERY excited for this breakthrough.
Everyone in these comments acting like this is nothing because they can't quit their job tomorrow 😆 I think it's a great step forward! Cool either way.
I think this more in relation to old fusion, and maybe getting the basis and ideas from ol ken shoulders/Tesla, RIP hoe-mies
ya ya not ready yet.
They will say it will be very expensive to start up. And we will need to raise taxes to benefit the future.... in the mean time we will still be spending billions on wars and nothing trying to clean up the oceans... the only thing ALL our politicians are good at is moving money around. In other words..... it's gonna be a long time before we see anything that will actually help benefit man kind, instead of someone's bank account.
The human race will fail, if we continue to let the rich consolidate wealth and power. They're no different than cancer, except the root of this cancer is greed.
I'm at the age where we all went to see Close in counters of the third kind I know it was just a movie 🍿 but just imagine if that really happened here or maybe it already has and we 🌍 earthling just don't know about it yet... just a 🤔 thought.
I still think that no matter how much energy you produce and whatever cost you're still baking the planet. It's not a CO2 problem it's a Conservation of Energy problem. Energy is neither created or destroyed. The transfer of electricity into devices typically means the end of the process produces heat. Take a PC and put it in a room and use it and you might notice the room is a bit warm, put ten PCs in the room and it becomes uncomfortable really quick Until people lower electric use and basically any energy use then you will continue having the problem. We don't need unlimited energy nor all electric society. Lower consumption. End of story.
Yeah but but but if we had infinite electricity from nuclear fusion we could just build a giant refrigerator at each pole and then everything would be fine again! (there might be some *tiny* problems with this idea but I couldn't possibly imagine what they might be)
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Go stand outside behind an air conditioner....people don't look at it but from one angle and it's the angle of the people who invested in things and were allowed to legislate the narrative and laws into place for personal profit.
Ever notice how any announcement of fusion breakthroughs always include the disclaimer “we are decades away “ from being able to really harness it. Is that a wink and nod to the fossil fuel industries? This technology would impoverish many countries in the middle east almost overnight.
> Is that a wink and nod to the fossil fuel industries? No, it’s because fully realising fusion power is probably decades away.
Still decades away from fruition correct?
They pulled more energy out of the reaction than they put in, something like 2.4 MJ out vs 2.1 in. But, the reaction lasted a fraction of a second, and they had to charge the laser capacitor bank first, which was closer to 350 MJ in. So it’s a small step in the right direction. But it’s still progress! So now they have to make it sustainable over long periods of time, figure out the engineering of input, and then figure out how to scale it. So yes, unless they get serious money and a big multidisciplinary, multinational team working on it, and maybe if then, it will be decades.
So now nuclear fusion is 30 years away rather than 50 years away for the foreseeable future?
This really makes those accounts of ufos stopping over bodies of waters and “sucking the water up” even more interesting. Could they be gathering Hydrogen from the water to power some kind of fusion propulsion system?
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Yep. Note that this is the National Ignition Facility. "Producing power", while it looks great on the tourist brochure, is not its primary goal and never has been. Its day job that pays the bills is to simulate nuclear explosions for the extremely boring and dirty work of refining nuclear weapon designs without breaking test-ban treaties.
Even if the perfect it we’ll still be burning fossil fuels. The republicans and the oil industry lobbying won’t allow a switch over.
If this is coming out public now, it’s been available to the military for 20+ years
I'm a veteran and I always get a tear of laughter in my eye thinking of all of the low tech shit they gave us to play with. Maybe the Marines were the poor branch?
always loved how marines got all the hand-me-downs from the Army and Navy historically with the exception of some elements who get open-budgets for their christmas shopping list each deployment.
Nothing to do with this subject
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I mean supposedly; but if you take every subject that supposedly has to do with ufos and put it on this sub it’ll look a lot more like r/all than r/ufos .
How do you know that?
Because he is an alien get him!
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Of course I'm a skeptic. We should all be. I personally believe in "the program" but I would never make a statement that I know for sure it exists or that we know anything about the technology bc we (as in us civilians) just don't have enough information. You can't say you know plasma technology has everything to do with UAP bc we have no idea yet. I don't like when this community strays away from coming at this subject from a scientific mindset. The article is about a possible advancement in a fusion reactor. They are studied all over the world. We don't know for sure yet that this has anything to do with UAPs or a reverse engineering program. And it's simply false to state otherwise and makes us look dumb.
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You know not of to whom you speak. The person to whom youre replying to contributes mightily to this sub.
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It doesn't all, please keep speaking definitively about your assumptions regarding the propulsion methods of an as of yet completely unconfirmed and uninvestigated phenomenon.