Scientists Accidentally Discovered Quark Fusion, Could It Be the Future of Energy?

Unknowable. For all we know, the same tech that allows economical fusion will make solar and wind power 100% efficient or close to it. Technological developments are funny that way. Then again, something like "quark fusion" or some other power source could come out of the blue much like automobiles made the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 disappear.

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/
....But this wasn’t just a British crisis: New York had a population of 100,000 horses producing around 2.5m pounds of manure a day.

This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”

This became known as the ‘Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894’.

The terrible situation was debated in 1898 at the world’s first international urban planning conference in New York, but no solution could be found. It seemed urban civilisation was doomed.

However, necessity is the mother of invention, and the invention in this case was that of motor transport. Henry Ford came up with a process of building motor cars at affordable prices. Electric trams and motor buses appeared on the streets, replacing the horse-drawn buses.

By 1912, this seemingly insurmountable problem had been resolved; in cities all around the globe, horses had been replaced and now motorised vehicles were the main source of transport and carriage.

Even today, in the face of a problem with no apparent solution, people often quote ‘The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894’, urging people not to despair, something will turn up!

 

Interesting, a lot of info there.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_battery

Is an interesting technology for off grid energy storage, ideally we need something that doesn't use Lithium so it's not competing with traditional batteries for raw materials.

 

A practical battery by necessity will have to minimize the used of precious metals.

 

You might be able to capture the power of the reaction, but in order to produce a chain reaction the reaction time required is way beyond it a quark fusion period of existence

.

 

Ironically, the Great Manure Crisis is manure. There's no evidence it ever happened.

The story claims a Times of London article predicted 9 feet of manure in the streets in 1894. Nobody has been able to demonstrate such an article exists. Being how the full historical archive of the Time of London back to 1775 is available online, it shouldn't be a problem to find such an article, if it exists. Nobody has.

The story claims an 1898 global urban planning conference in New York City couldn't solve the problem. Nobody can show any evidence that such a conference ever happened.

So, best evidence is that the Great Manure Crisis is a fictional story. It was popularized by a libertarian writer in 2004 here,

https://fee.org/articles/the-great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894/

and most cites of it today are descended from that piece, but urban legends about the streets of dung existed before that.

Also ironically, and quite contrary to the theme of the myth, the manure problem was solved before cars came about by ... big government. City governments hired crews to remove the manure. Problem solved.

 

Renewable energy is where the jobs and money are. Solar employs more people then oil in the USA.

 

Thank you for the link. You should actually read it because it's not saying what you posted it's saying. It states exactly my point:
"We should draw two lessons from this. First, human beings, left to their own devices, will usually find solutions to problems, but only if they are allowed to; that is, if they have economic institutions, such as property rights and free exchange, that create the right incentives and give them the freedom to respond. If these are absent or are replaced by political mechanisms, problems will not be solved.

Second, the sheer difficulty of predicting the future, and in particular of foreseeing the outcome of human creativity, is yet another reason for rejecting the planning or controlling of people’s choices. Above all, we should reject the currently fashionable “precautionary principle,” which would forbid the use of any technology until proved absolutely harmless."

 

So

Would you rather invest in Quark Fusion or Cold Fusion?

Send Message/Conversation


which and how much you wish to invest.
Big profits are just around the corner.


Moi
I market apocalypse insurance too.
It has never failed to pay off a claim.

 

The development of nanotube batteries that can hold vast amounts of energy is not that far away. That will make solar charging along with the independent development of photovoltaic conversion work for homes, many industries and automobiles and trucking as well as perhaps trains and tube travel and hypertrains, etc.

Fusion will further our development into a type 1 civilization and give us the energies necessary for greening the Sahara and other deserts and arid lands. That will go hand in hand with weather control.

Adding space elevators and putting asteroids rich in minerals and precious metals may also need fusion reactors/propulsion units. Battery packs can be used by third world countries allowing them to become self sufficient.

Enough energy can also allow subterranean cities as well as those below and floating on the sea. It can also be used for farming the ocean including fisheries and floating hydroponic systems relying on desalinated water.

You will need small fusion reactors (if possible) to begin to colonize the moon and Mars although with enough time and a space elevator you can use solar energy.

 

Yes to "enough energy".

I prefer the matter/anti matter reaction and dlithium crystal.
You know. Star Trek style.

Dilithium is an extremely hard crystalline mineral that occurs naturally on some planets. When placed in a high-frequency electromagnetic field, eddy currents are induced in its structure which keep charged particles away from the crystal lattice. This prevents it from reacting with antimatter when so energized, because the antimatter particles never actually touch it. Therefore, it is used to contain and regulate the annihilation reaction of matter and antimatter in a starship's warp core.



NO fusion required.
Besides no one has really made a controlled, fusion reaction.
Just the Big One.

 

Love your humor.

Fusion isn't that far away and if the world would stop bickering and screwing around with each other we could pour enough money into the project to get it done in a lot less than 30 years.

 

She certainly was very excited and then as you said, she confessed to the extreme problems. But she sure got excited.

 

They currently have the same problem with Fusion. Livermore Labs have tried and tried to make Fusion work. We know in nature Fusion works, but how can the Labs make it work to produce what man needs? And why does it cost so much?

 

Your home uses a tiny bit of power compared to say my former machine shop. My shop was wired by myself and an electrician and we hooked up to 440 V. And my machines used 220 V. I had portable machines too. I had other machines such as compressors, welders and cut off saws. All used power. Your home uses a fraction of what my small shop used. Huge factories consume so much power I see no way for solar to supply any of them.

 

It can't and never will even at that maximum theoretical efficiency of 85%. Volvo built a 19 acre solar power plant to help power a single car factory and it only provided around 15% of the power for that one single factory and of course only during the day. 19 ****ing acres of land wasted for that piddly amount, meanwhile a nuclear reactor that size could easily have provided enough power for that factory and thousands of homes on top of that.

Solar by far has the worst land use to power output ratio outside of maybe wind.

 

I am 70 y o and have been reading how fusion energy was not that far off since the fifties.

No Humor.​

At this point, when it comes to controlled fusion energy,
Moi sez, "Show Moi!".



Moi

<psst> primate.
has the secret of Energy from Ice. ​

 

The cost per M/W of solar operating at 85% efficiency would be at least an order of magnitude lower than nuclear and would be far far far safer to humans and the planet.

And last time I looked, there's lots of wide open spaces in the US sunbelt.

 

Solar is NOT safer for the planet than nuclear power. If you take all the nuclear accidents combined, include the mining for uranium, plutonium etc., you still only have a tiny fraction of the amount of pollution produced by making solar panels. Do you think they grow on trees? Making solar panels is extremely polluting but solar advocates literally believe that the panels just magically appear out of thin air.

Solar plants have had to be exempted from the mass killing of birds that would shut down ANY other facility, but because the birds are killed by sunlight its OK to solar advocates. I single solar plant in California kills 6,000 birds annually which is more than was killed during the Exxon Valdez fiasco but solar advocates willfully ignore it. Far more people have died from the pollution cause by the manufacture of solar panels and the mining of resources for manufacturing them. Google China solar panel pollution and be prepared to be shocked at what you are REALLY supporting.

 

Apparently you've never heard of radioactive waste. I am aware of the nuclear power industry safety record. Are you aware of the MASSIVE overhead costs of mitigating the potentially lethal problems that is inherent in the technology?

As for birds, orders of magnitude more are killed by city buildings placed directly in their migratory path and eating human generated plastic/toxic crap. NOt what I would call a substantial argument ya got there.


I find it rather ironic that you lament China's lack of environmental controls on their industry's yet applaud Trump's trashing the very controls you accuse China of not having.

But intellectual integrity is not a predominant trait amongst many a partisan.

 

What a bunch of lies. Skyrscrapers are NOT optional. Solar farms are.

Did you fail gradeschool because your logic sucks. Are you arguing that plastic waste is a necessary byproduct of nuclear power. LOL what the **** are you going on about? What does plastic waste have to do with anything? Plastic waste is pollution. Using your idiotic logic more birds die every year from predators. Once again what does that have to do with nuclear power.


You made a flat out false statement and since you were caught the best you can do is make up completely bullshit and claim that I said stuff that I didn't.

 

Interesting logic chain. fallacious, but interesting.

Plastic waste has nothing to do with nuclear power, but EVERYTHING to do with oil as you well know, however it would appear the use of analogy is lost on you.

Which statement was that again?

 

You claimed that solar was better for the planet. Its empirically provable that it is NOT better. Nuclear and wind power are the two cleanest forms of power outside of hydro which is heavily location dependent.

Skyscrapers are NOT optional. You only have so much square footage to work with so you MUST build up. That is NOT optional.

OMFG! Are you actually claiming that if we stopped using oil that we would also stop using plastics? What the **** is wrong with you? Your brain is so ****ing muddled that everything to you is mutually exclusive including things that have no relation to each other at all. We stopped burning wood in our stoves long ago...guess ****ing what we still use wood for tons of crap other than fuel. Jesus ****ing Christ I have had more intelligent conversations with 5 year olds.

**** off I am done arguing with you.

 

Very well said! That's correct. Many homes are using the solar power and they can save a lot from paying their electric bills.

 

Solar is booming now. And the cost of solar over the last 40 years has dropped about 100 fold. No one is waiting for organic solar panels. It is ALL about the cost per watt.