Man Made Sun?

[Broughden]

Is it just me or does anyone else's first instincts think this could go horribly horribly wrong?

Scientists plan to ignite tiny man-made star
It is science’s star experiment: an attempt to create an artificial sun on earth — and provide an answer to the world’s impending energy shortage.

Inside the facility, the scientists are impatient. After 11 years of development work, they want the last of the lenses and mirrors for the laser to be put in place and the tedious task of adjusting and aiming the laser to be over, a process they fear could take up to a year before they can successfully achieve fusion.

Just what I wanted to hear to reassure me...that the guys creating a sun right on our planet are IMPATIENT. That generally bodes well for doing things properly.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3981697/Scientists-plan-to-ignite-tiny-man-made-star.html

[schild]

Scarier than the large hadron collider? Check.

Thankfully, they're in England. Anyone up for a game of scorched earth?

[squirrel]

Is it just me or does anyone else's first instincts think this could go horribly horribly wrong?

Scientists plan to ignite tiny man-made star.

Meh. The LHC was a bust so far in disaster making. And this says TINY star. How TINY? Really?

[NiX]

I know they fired up the LHC, but they haven't actually collided anything yet, have they? I recall something broke and it would take months to fix.

[ashrik]

I don't think that impatience actually has anything to do with it. Outside of a James Bond movie, I don't think there exists wild charismatic scientists who don't have people double and triple check their work before incredible dangerous experiments happen.

Hahaha but what do I know
/raise eyebrow

[WindupAtheist]

A fusion reactor is actually safer (at least theoretically) than the fission reactors we have now. The way they work, if they're damaged they basically just... shut down.

[apocrypha]

I seem to remember a couple of major powers creating not so tiny man-made suns out in the open for quite a long time. Earth still here, just a bit more glowy than it used to be.

[Yoru]

This is nothing new or even notable. It's just intensely shitty reporting of an inertial confinement fusion experiment.

We've been doing these since the 1970s.

[Lantyssa]

Is it just me or does anyone else's first instincts think this could go horribly horribly wrong?

It's just you.

Remember that thread in the MMO board that shows how shitty journalists are?  Yeah.  The scientists want to start the experiement, but they're not going to throw eleven years of work down the drain so they can turn it on and have it fail because they couldn't wait an extra minute.

Also, all the "OMG Science, I don't have a goddman clue how any of this works so I think I'll run around like Chicken Little" gets really old.  You want to know who to fear?  The guys that know what they're doing and want you dead.  Don't piss off any competent scientists and you'll be fine.

[schild]

It's not a chicken little thing, I just find life far more appealing by assuming the worst and always being pleasantly surprised. Half-glass full fuckers have no clue how much enjoyment they're missing out from by always assuming the best, or at least the above average.

[Merusk]

People call me a pessimist for that view.  I say their naive idealism will doom us all one day, and I'm happy when I'm wrong.  How happy will they be when they're wrong? Huh? S'what I thought.

[MrHat]

It's not a chicken little thing, I just find life far more appealing by assuming the worst and always being pleasantly surprised. Half-glass full fuckers have no clue how much enjoyment they're missing out from by always assuming the best, or at least the above average.

Don't you need the half-full fuckers in order to set a scale for low expectations?

[schild]

It's not a chicken little thing, I just find life far more appealing by assuming the worst and always being pleasantly surprised. Half-glass full fuckers have no clue how much enjoyment they're missing out from by always assuming the best, or at least the above average.

Don't you need the half-full fuckers in order to set a scale for low expectations?

No, we don't.

[Yoru]

It's not a chicken little thing, I just find life far more appealing by assuming the worst and always being pleasantly surprised. Half-glass full fuckers have no clue how much enjoyment they're missing out from by always assuming the best, or at least the above average.

Believing that stuff like this will end the world isn't half-empty. It's half-witted.

You may as well presume that every egg you ever crack will contain a tiny bomb meant to kill you and precisely you, and then be "pleasantly surprised" when it turns out to be just an egg.

[MrHat]

You may as well presume that every egg you ever crack will contain a tiny bomb meant to kill you and precisely you, and then be "pleasantly surprised" when it turns out to be just an egg.

Awesome.  I can't wait for my next meal.

"Oh God, it's poisoned, I know it's poisoned, Oh God, I'm going to die."

"WOOOOT STILL ALIVE FUCKERS"

[schild]

It's not a chicken little thing, I just find life far more appealing by assuming the worst and always being pleasantly surprised. Half-glass full fuckers have no clue how much enjoyment they're missing out from by always assuming the best, or at least the above average.

Believing that stuff like this will end the world isn't half-empty. It's half-witted.

You may as well presume that every egg you ever crack will contain a tiny bomb meant to kill you and precisely you, and then be "pleasantly surprised" when it turns out to be just an egg.

Yes, that is a reasonable comparison.

Also, you won't be laughing when one of your eggs does turn out to have a tiny bomb in it. Fucker.

[Oban]

"Oh God, it's poisoned, I know it's poisoned, Oh God, I'm going to die."

"WOOOOT STILL ALIVE FUCKERS"

Trust me, when you do get salmonella from an egg the last thing you will be cheering about is the fact that you are not dead.

[MrHat]

My post, while maybe implying I'd be having eggs, did not explicitly state I would be having eggs.

In fact, I plan on having a burrito. A big, fat burrito.

[Hawkbit]

I read the OP and that voice from HL popped into my head:  "Gordon, put the thing into the thing", but I couldn't remember what the things were. 

Odd. 

[Murgos]

Temperature of the sun (a star):

The Sun has a spectral class of G2V. G2 means that it has a surface temperature of approximately 5,780 K (5,500 C) giving it a white color that often, because of atmospheric scattering, appears yellow when seen from the surface of the Earth.

Temperature of a Nuke, of which we have detonated many on the Earth:

Bibliographic Entry	Result (w/surrounding text)	Standardized Result
Zitzewitz, Paul & Robert Neff. Physics. New York: Glencoe, 1995.	"Fusion reactions require that the atoms be raised to temperatures of millions of degrees."	10^6 K
Taffel, Alexander. Physics: It's Methods and Meanings. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992.	"… temperature of millions of degrees Celsius"	10^6 K
Rammanohav, Reddy C. Effects of a Nuclear Bomb Attack. Kathmandu, Nepal: Himal, 1998.	"… fireball whose temperature is over 10 million degrees"	10^7 K
Soo, Jason. "Atomic Education." Enscquire. 7, 4 (September 1995): 10.	"Within 17 meters, the explosion temperature was 300,000 degrees Celsius. Within 50 meters it was 9,000-11,000 degrees, and at ground level beneath hypocenter the temperature exceeded 6,000 degrees."	300,000 K 9,000–11,000 K 6,000 K
Ochi, Yukiko. Nagasaki marks 53rd anniversary of atomic bombing. Internews, 1998.	"… instantaneously reached several million degrees centigrade"	10^6 K

And yet, the planet is still here...

[Lantyssa]

It's not a chicken little thing, I just find life far more appealing by assuming the worst and always being pleasantly surprised. Half-glass full fuckers have no clue how much enjoyment they're missing out from by always assuming the best, or at least the above average.

I'm all for this point of view when it comes to humans making decisions, how my day is going to go, or life in general.

Yoru summed up my feelings when it applies to man-made disasters forcast by people without any understanding of what the real possibilities are.  You're more likely to win the lottery than be affected by this.

However, if anyone feels they're likely to die in a fiery mini-sun, sucked into a black hole, or have enormous wealth fall in their lap, you can send me a PM and I'll give you the address to mail all your earthly possessions to.

[Strazos]

What if it's a Black Hole Sun? Then we're screwed.

[K9]

Temperature of the sun (a star):

The Sun has a spectral class of G2V. G2 means that it has a surface temperature of approximately 5,780 K (5,500 C) giving it a white color that often, because of atmospheric scattering, appears yellow when seen from the surface of the Earth.

Temperature of a Nuke, of which we have detonated many on the Earth:

Bibliographic Entry	Result (w/surrounding text)	Standardized Result
Zitzewitz, Paul & Robert Neff. Physics. New York: Glencoe, 1995.	"Fusion reactions require that the atoms be raised to temperatures of millions of degrees."	10^6 K
Taffel, Alexander. Physics: It's Methods and Meanings. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992.	"… temperature of millions of degrees Celsius"	10^6 K
Rammanohav, Reddy C. Effects of a Nuclear Bomb Attack. Kathmandu, Nepal: Himal, 1998.	"… fireball whose temperature is over 10 million degrees"	10^7 K
Soo, Jason. "Atomic Education." Enscquire. 7, 4 (September 1995): 10.	"Within 17 meters, the explosion temperature was 300,000 degrees Celsius. Within 50 meters it was 9,000-11,000 degrees, and at ground level beneath hypocenter the temperature exceeded 6,000 degrees."	300,000 K 9,000–11,000 K 6,000 K
Ochi, Yukiko. Nagasaki marks 53rd anniversary of atomic bombing. Internews, 1998.	"… instantaneously reached several million degrees centigrade"	10^6 K

And yet, the planet is still here...

A better comparison would be to the core of the Star, where the bulk of the reaction is occurring. The Sun's core is 15.7 million kelvin according to the wikipedia.

I think the real question here is, why is science reporting in the general media so universally shit these days? Everything we see is a load of uninformed kneejerk bollocks.

[Yoru]

I think the real question here is, why is science reporting in the general media so universally shit these days? Everything we see is a load of uninformed kneejerk bollocks.

Fear sells.

[Morat20]

Your bullshit detector should have twigged on the whole "fuel" concept. How is it going to self-sustain in the absense of very carefully controlled conditions and constant injections of fuel? (Hydrogen or lithium or whatever they're using)?

The freaking sun does it through insane gravitational pressure that happens due to the large mass of fuel it has (IE: itself).

There's less to worry about than the LHC. There's fucking NOTHING to worry about, because fusion reactions -- even if self-sustaining -- require some to all of the energy to be fed back into the reaction in order to maintain hydrogen density and temperature. Without it, it just fizzles out, like any fire starved of fuel.

[Cim]

This actually sounds pretty cool!

[BitWarrior]

As I'm sure we all know from Spider-man 2, if things start getting out of hand all you have to do is dunk it in the East River.

[apocrypha]

I think the real question here is, why is science reporting in the general media so universally shit these days? Everything we see is a load of uninformed kneejerk bollocks.

Combination of humanities graduates writing about science stories and sensationalism being good for newspaper sales.

[Merusk]

I think the real question here is, why is science reporting in the general media so universally shit these days? Everything we see is a load of uninformed kneejerk bollocks.

Combination of humanities graduates writing about science stories and sensationalism being good for newspaper sales.

You for got to add-in the touch of apathy from the general population towards anything science that doesn't evoke fear or gadgetry awe.

[Aez]

Nice, next step is miniaturizing it to power up giant mechs!

[Sir T]

Personally I'm going to prepare for the coming catastrophy by playing through S.T.A.L.K.E.R. again

Mainly as its a lot more fun than reading the tabloids that are spreaying this crap aroind. I mean seriously, how many people have died from the Bird flu that was going to wipe us out a few years ago?

[Soln]

we need fusion.  If only to construct a "B Ark".

[K9]

I mean seriously, how many people have died from the Bird flu that was going to wipe us out a few years ago?

247, out of 391 reported cases, a 63% mortality rate.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/country/cases_table_2008_12_16/en/index.html

[Sir T]

I mean seriously, how many people have died from the Bird flu that was going to wipe us out a few years ago?

247, out of 391 reported cases, a 63% mortality rate.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/country/cases_table_2008_12_16/en/index.html

So all the howling about bird flu marching across Europe and all the turkey producers that went out of buisness due to the hysteria that was generated by the Press about an imminent epidemic (and would not if you didn't eat raw turkey and didn't go around sniffing bird shit) was totally justified. Especially with not a single case in europe, and since sick birds generally dont tend to fly very far so all the talk about migration patterns was again really justified.

I shoulpd mention that I'm a biit sore here becasue a few weeks ago in Ireland we had 100% of pork products pulled from the shelves becasue a small amount of them were found with unacceptable levels of Dioxin. Of course doing that in the busiest time of the year unnesseserilly cost 2000 jobs, but at least the polititians ass was covered.

[Yegolev]

As I'm sure we all know from Spider-man 2, if things start getting out of hand all you have to do is dunk it in the East River.

This works great on both mad-science plots and Italians moving onto "your turf".