Reply To: X-ray cooling?

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Speaking of density of energy production, there is a table in Big Bang Never Happened where he shows that living organisms consume far more energy per unit volume of space than a star. And animals are just doing chemical activity, a million times less dense than fission, which is itself less energetic than fusion.

I couldn’t grasp this concept. Lfe is higher energy density than the sun? Seems ridiculous.

I think the energy density release of the sun averaged to something like 100 watts per cubic meter. That’s nothing! But then I realized the sun is really big. I imagined a 3d lattice of 100 watt bulbs stretching thousands of miles in every direction. The sun is a million miles across. You’ve got low density energy release coming out of a huge volume. The overall energy release is pretty big then.

A fellow named Alexander Franklin Mayer came up with some alternative theories of the underlying physics of stuff. One thing he asserted was that the energy of particles that one wants to fuse has to be just exactly right for the particles to fuse and release energy. And his theory predicted the level of energy was very precise, and possibly different from standard theories. As such he said there might be a possibility of initiating fusion very easily, if you can just get the particle energy just right in collisions.

Bussard makes this point. In a plasma of a specific temperature there is a distribution of velocities. His polywell fusion approach depended on ions of random temperatures being confined in the center by electric charge, so the ions are bouncing in and out for a certain minimum period of time. By that time they’ll have fused.

And I think there are these things called “fusors” that maybe the guy who invented TV (Farnsworth) was using. Like an electron gun in a CRT. Accelerate ions to just the right velocity at a target and they’ll fuse. Seems straightforward. Set the voltage just right and stream ions and you’ll get fusion. But I guess the problem is break even and getting rid of the waste heat. Your target would need to be chilled to absolute zero I guess so its heat velocity would be eliminated.

Sorry I’m just rambling.