The quest to generate limitless clean energy from atomic-fusion, such as the Sun produces, has spanned at least fifty-years. The Sun, our star, warms the solar system by fusing two hydrogen atoms to make one helium atom; in the process surplus energy is shed, which radiates and brings life-energy to Earth, and maybe life to our neighbouring planets. To date, despite huge budgets and hundreds of brave attempts, science has not managed to get more energy out of fusion experiments than it puts in.
Basically, the aim is to create and control a plasma - hot, pure energy - by firing lasers at elements, or by other processes, that force atoms together. This "forcing" uses a lot of energy. The sun-like plasma is very, very hot. It can only be contained in a magnetic-bottle. Making such "bottles" to contain the heat of the sun requires a lot of energy and precise control. So far, plasma has been manufactured that lasts just parts of a second, requiring more energy input than the output. When, or if, fusion is achieved in our laboratories, harvesting useful heat from the plasma, to drive turbines, is another major technical hurdle.
Why bother - when we have fully mastered atomic-fission? Atomic energy reactors have been contributing electric power since the Atom-Bomb and H-Bomb were invented. The major difference between fission and fusion is that fission explodes the energy locked into atoms and sub-atomic particles - while fusion builds new atoms and sub-atomic particles. The human race has not yet managed to fuse the bases of mass or matter together, moulding elements or parts of elements from "pure-energy". Pure energy pervades the whole universe as fields - that I prefer to envisage as oceans. Fields are flat and two dimensional - Oceans are deep and three dimensional.
Either way - we don't know how to compress or precipitate objects /mass/ material /stuff from plasma. Creation of fundamental particles is still a mystery.
We bother? - Because fission is a dirty, dangerous, poisonous process that releases lethal or wounding and disruptive radiation of wavicles/particles with half-lives of hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. It is said that fusion produces no such harmful debris.
To assist the human-race to harness atomic fusion, I suggest we rethink gravity. The most plentiful element in the universe is hydrogen. Wherever we look in the cosmos, we see immense wispy clouds of hydrogen. They drift together, they make oceans, the oceans get deeper and deeper. They coalesce. In the depths of the cloud-oceans stars form. The stars form galaxies, of billions of stars. Each star is a sun, radiating immense energies (light) from atomic-fusion. This act of galaxy creation is caused mainly by gravity.
With the risk of being repetitive, I speculate that the outer-force of gravity is the universal ocean of radiation that is 43.7 b.l.y. deep (to the horizon of the observable universe). It is now known that light and electromagnetic energy are not mass-less. Light exerts pressure. I guess this almost infinite ocean presses almost eternally on every-thing, including the hydrogen clouds - which coalesce.
Professor Casimir demonstrated that between masses that become matter, some wavelengths of radiation, the universal radiation, cannot manifest. The radiation between masses is less than the outside radiation. Between masses is a shadow of exclusion. As mass piles upon mass, the more shells of matter are formed, the deeper the Casimir Shadow (I think) becomes. This inner partial vacuum is the pull of gravity. At its most extreme the inner vacuum becomes a black-hole. Black Holes do recycle their trapped energy.
It takes these two forces - Outer and Inner - to power fusion in stars. Our fusion-energy researchers might collaborate with physicists who want to make black-holes (vacuums), compressed by 43.7 b.l.y of radiation (pressure) - to create useful fusion-plasma. Then all they have to do is find a way to contain and direct it.
It is just a thought. But it is a new thought. Fusionable material perhaps?
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