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Good News Thread


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Okay, the Australian posts a story from America and the American posts a story from Australia.... I can live with that :D Good news stories are international :great:

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  • Site Administrator

For all us science geeks, some news from the UK:

 

British schoolboy, 13, becomes the youngest to build a nuclear fusion reactor

 

I was telling my son about this, since he's only just turned 13 and hence as a chance to break the record if he works on it this year.... 0:)

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*does not think that is good news*

 

 

Why not? It highlights a young kid applying himself to something useful. If he can do that at 13, who knows what he'll be able to accomplish 20 years down the line with a higher education and experience. 

 

Someone seems to be one hell of a negative nelly.  :rolleyes:

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Why not? It highlights a young kid applying himself to something useful. If he can do that at 13, who knows what he'll be able to accomplish 20 years down the line with a higher education and experience. 

 

Someone seems to be one hell of a negative nelly.  :rolleyes:

one step away from teenage nuclear bomb makers.... or as the case may be... they have already gone past that step since we learned to make the bomb before we learned how to make the reactor.

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  • Site Administrator

one step away from teenage nuclear bomb makers.... or as the case may be... they have already gone past that step since we learned to make the bomb before we learned how to make the reactor.

Er... you do realise that we're talking nuclear fusion, not nuclear fission? No one has made a practical nuclear fusion reactor -- all current designs use more energy than they create.

 

Nuclear fusion is what powers the Sun. If we can build a practical nuclear fusion reactor, our energy problems will be solved for the foreseeable future, since hydrogen is one of the most plentiful substances on Earth (using electricity to get it from seawater). Nuclear fusion also doesn't have the long-term radioactive by-products that nuclear fission has. :)

 

Sadly, the 'breakthrough' needed to get a nuclear fusion reactor to work productively has been 'on the horizon' for several decades now. I'm still waiting, and I've been waiting since I was a teenager :P

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Er... you do realise that we're talking nuclear fusion, not nuclear fission? No one has made a practical nuclear fusion reactor -- all current designs use more energy than they create.

 

Nuclear fusion is what powers the Sun. If we can build a practical nuclear fusion reactor, our energy problems will be solved for the foreseeable future, since hydrogen is one of the most plentiful substances on Earth (using electricity to get it from seawater). Nuclear fusion also doesn't have the long-term radioactive by-products that nuclear fission has. :)

 

Sadly, the 'breakthrough' needed to get a nuclear fusion reactor to work productively has been 'on the horizon' for several decades now. I'm still waiting, and I've been waiting since I was a teenager :P

which is hard for me to imagine "teen to be the youngest to make a fusion reactor." when we haven't been able to come up with a viable one yet.... :P

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  • Site Administrator

The word is 'practical', not 'viable'. Fusion reactions have been produced in laboratories around the world (and, as the article showed, even in school laboratories). The problem is that they currently take more energy than they produce. As a means of generating energy, they're currently a failure. That doesn't mean you can't produce nuclear fusion -- it's just not currently commercially practical as an energy source. :D

 

Continuing this thread, I went searching and found the Good News page from the ABC (American version, not Australia). Here's one of the stories from that page:

 

Penn State Raises $13.3M for Pediatric Cancer Research at Dance Marathon

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*thinks practical and viable can be equatable.*

:o you mean they're taking Pediatric Cancer patients and making them do a dance marathon for research :o the horrors! the horrors! (we also need a Horror emote :P ) :lol: and people are paying them to do this :o I think there are some sick sadistic people out there :evil:

Edited by Celethiel
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