Reply To: A Big Prick in the Balloon of the Big Bang

[Ivy Matt]

Well, according to the hypothesis, the plasma in the center is never supposed to touch the wall of the container because there’s a gradient of slightly cooler but more dense plasmas and gases filling the vessel from the center to the walls, and the centrifugal force keeps the coolest, densest gases against the container walls and the hottest, least dense plasmas in the center. The plasma in the center is confined by the cooler and slightly denser plasma that immediately surrounds it, not by the container wall.

That’s the hypothesis, anyway. From my perspective as a non-scientist, I can see that it may not work that way, but not that it necessarily won’t work that way. Possible problems that I see: 1) Centrifuges may not separate out plasmas and gases the way they do liquids and solids, so central D-T plasma is never formed. 2) Separation may work on the elements, but thermalization bleeds energy away from the center of the vessel too quickly for fusion to happen.