Is the Farnsworth Fusor the Next Big Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion Technology?

[thed]

[SOLVED] Farnsworth Fusior been built

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,510054502,00.html

"The apparatus is nothing less than the sine qua non of modern science: a nuclear fusion reactor, based on the plans of Utah's own Philo Farnsworth"

Am I the only one thinking this lad will be making the Cheddite Drive next.

 

[Brad_Ad23]

Overhyped anyone?

It doesn't produce extra energy from what I see. And it says others exist. He just had the time and parts to put one together based off of designs.

 

[FZ+]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,12977,1048639,00.html

Despite mutterings about "a hoax" on the web, there is nothing particularly revolutionary about Wallace's little reactor, which has won prizes from science fairs and the like. Reportedly cobbled together from parts salvaged from junkyards and charity shops, the device is the latest example of what is known as an inertial electrostatic confinement fusion reactor. About the size of footballs, they were first designed and built in the 1950s but their feeble power output has seen them relegated to the fringes of fusion research ever since.
...
Wallace's device instead relies on electrostatics to force the ions together in the centre of the reactor, which means far fewer collisions occur and so much less heat is produced. It does, however, produce neutrons, which show that fusion is taking place

 

[jammieg]

That's odd though, I sometimes hear people talking about when are we going to achieve fusion and it's long since been done just not to a commercial level yet. I thought the earliest was in 1990 or so, but then why all the confusion with fusion? I guess it is one of those things, I mean if any good experimentalist could get on the internet and find the plans on how to build some very interesting devices then scrap it together... who knows what people might do with them or build, my bet is that the most coveted and guarded knowledge of all time is physics, probably for the best anyway.

...although my sources of information in the past were poor and of magazine varieties, probably why most people never heard of it, that it's more profitable to hear of it as some great barrier in science that is being worked on and near a breakthough than it can be done just not very well yet.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Sure fusion has been achieved many times, going back to the 1950s. What hasn't ever been achieved is breakeven. The fusion device putting out more energy than is put into it. The "Farnsworth Fusor" won't come close to doing that either.

 

[FZ+]

The fusion device putting out more energy than is put into it.

(And in a controlled fashion.)

 

[selfAdjoint]

So true. See thread on hydrogen bomb.