why cant we ....(fusion)?
347934
IF YOU DON'T BLOW UP THE NEIGHBORHOOD YOU'LL BE A MILLIONAIRE \nSERIOUSLY HOW MUCH RADIATION WOULD HAPPEN
1179277
the importance of physics?? it is very imp cos if there wasn't pysics we wouln't know how things work. there wouldn't be neither electricity nor magnetism. you wouldn't live as comfortable as you live today...is this enough? :)
442259
No it is not possible at this time and I doubt anyone will ever attempt it for a couple of reasons.  From NASA's webpage you can read the rest by clicking on my sources link\n\n1. Most of the power in lightning is dissipated as thunder and light, which cannot be easily harnessed to generate electric power.\n2. However, even just the electrical current of lightning is considerable -- 20,000 amps on average, the same as 100 steel welders. But the power is on for only a brief fraction of a second, so the total power is actually small, only enough to power a 100-watt light bulb for six months.\n3. The huge surge of electrical current over very brief times makes storing the energy impractical.\n4. Lightning strikes to specific locations are infrequent and inconsistent. This makes scheduling power availability impractical.\n5. Lightning can be very damaging. The collection systems have to be incredibly robust, which would drive up costs. Lightning is also very dangerous, making it tough on the collection system workers.\n6. Lightning would have to be collected over a huge area, making the system impractically expensive.\n\n#3 Its saying that lightning comes with an extreme burst of energy in a very short amount of time.  When it comes to electricity it takes awhile to build up, electricity created by a damn for example is created by the water and the turbines, it builds up slowly and is put into its reserve where ppl then draw from it.  If there was to be a massive spike were the water all of a sudden speed up to even 100mph the turbines would overheat and become useless.  Imagine charging a battery, instead of putting it on a charger and gradually letting it build up you just zapped it with a tazer or something.  Its not going to charge its going to explode.  Therefore it is impractical to store it becuase we have nothing that could take such a massive amount of energy in such a short time
794246
Absolutely.  In fact, there have been several different approaches, including zapping little pellets with a monster laser (NOVA), which are then immersed in water.  These minuscule nuclear bombs fuse and release their energy into the water, creating steam and turning turbines.\n\nThe most promising method, however, is a fusion reactor; a magnetic bottle which traps plasma.  Fusion occurs when the electromagnetic forces of nuclei (which are positive) are overcome.  In order to get nuclei, atoms are injected into the reactor and brought to immense temperatures.  The individual atoms, which are neutral, become so energetic that the electrons are stripped from the nuclei, creating plasma.  Plasma is simply free electrons (negatively charged and unbounded to a nucleus) and the positively charged nuclei.  Because these are positively and negatively charged, the plasma is contained within magnetic field lines.  This is the proverbial "magnetic bottle".\n\nThe nuclei smash into each other, creating helium nuclei and excess neutrons.  These neutrons are EXTREMELY energetic (14 MeV), and are neutrally charged.  Therefore, these neutrons zip right past the magnetic field lines.  The charged plasma remains, continuing the fusion process; and the neutrons are captured in water, where elastic collisions with H2O molecules transfers the energy from the neutrons to the water, heating the water, turning it to steam, and turning the turbines.\n\nThere are a couple of major problems.  First, the sun is very big and very hot.  Getting similar temperatures and pressures on Earth is next to impossible.  Although the energy released is several orders of magnitude greater than the energy put in when the process is going a full capacity, getting it started has been very difficult.  However, through TFTR and the new ITER, already the plasmas have generated more energy than were used to start the process.  This is a big step.\n\nAlso, the magnetic bottle and the plasma can experience some strange instabilities and wave functions.  Any time a harmonic resonance-like phenomena occurs, the fusion can break down, the plasma cools, and the process slows or stops.  As the test reactors continue to gather data, these phenomena are better understood.\n\nFinally, those 14 MeV neutron zip through the magnetic bottle and the water, and interact with impurities in the concrete and building materials, creating radioactive waste.  This waste is not insignificant - huge amounts of concrete becomes low-level waste.  Low level waste is NOT a measure of how dangerous it is - this stuff can be very dangerous - but it will only remain dangerous for about 100 years or so.  It's not the stuff that remains deadly for thousands of years.\n\nSo solve the instabilities, be able to sustain a plasma and reaction long enough to become self-sustaining, and be prepared for the low level waste, and fusion will become an almost unlimited energy supply.
560833
why cant we have both?
1059948
read these pages to find out more:\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
682655
I presume you mean a sustained fusion reaction: brief ones, like those in hydrogen bombs and in current fusion reactors, are well documented.\n\nThe tricky bit that we haven't solved is how to create the high temperatures and pressures needed to maintain a sustained fusion reaction, and still be able to feed in fuel, but still have it small enough to work with.  As others in this answer chain have pointed out, intense electromagnetic fields have been successfully used to contain the reaction, but the adding fuel thing is a challenge.\n\nIt is, I think, a solvable problem; we just haven't solved it yet.  Wouldn't it be nice if the Pons & Fleisher reaction had really worked--cold fusion...
802343
The process of fusion: 4H  ----->  1He + 2positrons + neutrinoes\nwhich is:                       4p ------>  1AlphaParticle + 2 positrons\n \nie   4 protons fuse together to give an alpha particle.\n\nIt is very unlikely that 4 protons will be in the same vicinity for this reaction to occur.\n\nIn fusion reactors we use deuterium to fuse into helium.\n                  1D  +  1D    -------->   He\nas we only need two particles to collide. (This is much more likely than 4 protons colliding at once. ) \n\nOn the sun we need a way of storing the hydrogen nuclei until we have gathered 4 of them together and they can then split off as the helium nucleus.  The only store you will find on the sun is the collection of slightly heavier atomic nuclei(known by astronomers as metals and meaning any nucleus heavier than helium).\nThere are a number of pathways thought to be available for this process which proceeds through the weak nuclear reaction at a density of 1 or 2 reactions in each cubic metre of the sun. (see stellar physics books for details).  This process is the equivalent to Catalysis in ordinary chemistry.\n\nThis would be hopeless for the generation of energy in a tokamak    so we could not use this process on earth for the generation of electrical power.
1018555
Yes, and all our environmental problems.   At nuclear fusion temperatures you could make a fusion torch that would decompose waste into useful raw materials and transmute radioactive waste into stable elements.   A fusion reactor isn't likely to be small enough to power cars or aircraft, but the cheap energy it produces could be used to synthesise fuels for these vehicles.   We've been researching controlled nuclear fusion since the 1950s and we haven't made much progress.   But it will solve so many problems that it's worth spending vast amounts of money on this field.   Any technology that doesn't violate any fundamental laws of physics will one day work.
721125
fusion is when two elementary particles collide and combine or fuse to make -- even temporarily -- a new particle. In the graphic below, a form of the hydrogen nucleus -- Tritium -- collides with another form of the hydrogen nucleus -- Deuterium -- to form a new particle. (Deuterium and Tritium are isotopes of hydrogen -- a form of water.) The fused particle is not stable, and quickly decays via the split decay mode into a neutron -- moving very fast, i.e., "hot" -- and a helium neucleus -- also know as an "alpha" particle and energy.\nThe radioactive by-products from fission are undeniably bad. They last for tens of thousands of years and can cause untold problems, the worst of which is through terrosists using the waste products for weapons. The fast neutron from fusion can potentially interact with metals a cause them to become radioactive. This process can be minimized by have neutron shielding between the fusion burn and any metals in the reactor. However, the radioactive metals produced -- and any ash from the fusion burn itself -- is a low-level radioactivity that is not considered dangerous, with half-lives in the tens of years. There is no comparison -- radioactive waste from fission is very dangerous, radioactive waste from fusion is not very dangerous.\nIt is hard for most people to understand where this energy comes from, and how much it is. Most people have heard of Einstein's famous equation:\n\nE = mc2\n\nWhen the fusion reactions listed above occur, a small amount of mass disappears. The small amount of mass is converted into a large amount of energy. How much is large? A typical chemical reaction in which hydrogen and oxygen combine to produce water, releases about 1 eV of energy. The fusion process typically releases 1,000,000 times as much energy. Historically, when people talk about the benefits of nuclear fusion, they refer to how much fuel must be burned to equal to each other.\nNuclear fusion takes water, burns it, releases helium (and a small amount of radiation in the form of neutrons), and converts the missing mass into massive amounts of energy.
748191
There is a law in physics that states energy cannot be created or destroyed - it can only be changed.  Everything, including you is made of energy.\n\nThat's all I know for sure.  My gut tells me we have nothing to fear.
232862
It would take a lot more energy than is generated in one fusion bomb.  Watch the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
328894
A potential answer would be the Positron (the electron's antiparticle)\n\nFor a "normal" 4H->1He fusion cycle it really depends, there are several paths that it can take, but for the sake of argument let's look at the one most common in the sun.  The excess mass that 4 hydrogen nuclei have over 1 helium nuclei is converted into energy.  Some of that energy is carried off in gamma rays - ready to use light energy, that will then interact and heat the surroundings.\n\nSome of that mass-energy is given off in positrons.  These are the anti-particle to the electron.  These particles will quickly meet up with an electron, and mutually anhilate relesing energy equal to their combined mass.  Some of the energy is carried of by neutrinos.  They don't anhilate and thus leave the system quite rapidly.
1157622
how bout we assimilate both coutries nuclear programs so we don't have to waste so much energy.  why everyone wanna be against each other.  why not work as a team to better life.
86810
When you talk of the possibilities of Matter and Anti-Matter...we already have them.\n\nProblem in lies that if you seperate matter and anti-matter and combine them to forn energy, you have to find a way to contain the energy (there is alot from a small cumbustion)  There is the problem.  So my thoughts are not yet ready for warp technology.
480487
Both time travel/time machine and cold fusion have theory, scientific theory on how it can be done and accomplish.\n\nBut to bring a scientific theory into practical application, it will take years of experiment, and trial-and-error experimentation. \n\nSometimes coming up with a practical application can take decades or centuries due to limited technology.\n\nIn example, Black Hole, it was an old theory that Black Hole exist, but only in the last 10 years when scientific observation and space exploration confirm black hole do exist, among the technology use is the Hubble telescope, which were unavailbale quarter of centuries ago.\n\nOn the fusion side, its harder to create fusion than fision. The energy requires and the scale or scope of the work. But maybe sometimes in the future, someone might stumble into a way to create a tabletop fusion.
1022849
Fusion mixed with a dirty bomb. So, a hydrogen bomb that liberates lots and lots of radiation. Anything small would be bad also, only because it would be harder to detect, and counter.