Did NASA Just Discover Clean, Unlimited Energy?

the earth is a cradle and the sun a watchful guardian everything we have is powered by the sun in some way whether it is the compressed remains of life that soaked up the sun billions of years ago or the cycles of weather that run the wind or of course the photons that excite depletion region electrons inside our solar panels around 2025 the radio isotopes of the furthest man-made object will fade and it will seize operations voyager 1 is a testament to humanity's longing to explore the outer reaches of space but just as much it is a reminder that if we stray too far from our guardian there is only silence and darkness the sun will not let us out of its resplendent shadow unless we grow solve the block puzzles and brain teasers of physics so the sun no longer remains an indomitable giant but becomes a gentle friend whose children are finally ready to leave the nest let's go to proxima centauri and let's take the fastest aircraft we have the sr-71 two engines producing thrust of around 150 000 newtons each on an aircraft weighing 60 000 kilograms so we could get an acceleration of 5 meters per second half of earth's gravity a pretty pleasant trip no backaches or neck eggs to worry about and let's not ponder about the relativistic mass or air etc just now we'll worry about them later with continuous acceleration we would be able to get there relativistically in just over a year five years would have elapsed on earth but who cares about those guys unfortunately our fuel would last us part of the way there fossil fuels and chemical energy in general have a pretty hard limit on energy density but there is another source of energy on our planet one that is kept carefully hidden away on the high energy shelf so we don't accidentally hurt ourselves if we could somehow utilize the energy locked inside deuterium we could go a lot further deuterium is abundant to the point of being infinite in sea water and it's abundant in the universe as well so we could even stop and refuel if required scientists all over the world have been trying to figure out this puzzle for a while now while magnetic confinement with huge magnets is considered the most promising technology right now they're also experimenting with inertial confinement but there is yet another kind of fusion that has recently become an area of great interest for some nasa scientists lattice confinement fusion let's see what nasa did they acquired some deuterium gas and put powdered metal in the same chamber with high temperature and pressure the metal slowly became saturated with deuterons one of the scientists involved said that the density of the neutrons at the end of this process was higher than if it was actual solid deuterium pretty impressive though i really don't know how dense solid deuterium is so moving on they accelerated a beam of electrons towards the metal lattice where they were slowed down and deflected by the positively charged nuclei now the electrons have lost energy by slowing down that energy has to go somewhere and it is emitted in the form of gamma rays also known as bremstrolung radiation i've told you in the earlier videos that the strong nuclear force binding the nucleons together is really really powerful a hundred times stronger than the electromagnetic force and the more the nucleons the stronger the cumulative force all the way up to iron in the periodic table deuterium being near the bottom of this curve means that its nuclear binding energy is the weakest and a photon above 2.2 mega electron volts can break it apart which it does breaking the neutron into a neutron and a proton the proton drifts off to find some electrons and other protons to hang with the neutron however is at a loose end a lot of spare energy and it doesn't really care about avoiding positive charges so it slams headlong into the neutrons trapped within the lattice giving them high kinetic energy this energy would normally not be enough to initiate fusion but we have a specific environment here metals are excellent conductors of electricity because the regular lattice structure allows electrons to move about freely they don't have to be tightly bound to one particular atom because of this all pervasive electron cloud the neutrons are also lulled into a trance and the neutron slamming into them make more and more of them energetic they frantically dance around in this drunken stupor and blinded by the fog of negative charge they begin to crash into each other and fuse the products of this fusion process are helium-3 and a neutron or a triton and a proton the energy of these neutrons according to scientists is the smoking gun that proves that it is in fact fusion that is happening because it matches up perfectly with results from other neutron neutron fusion experiments but we're not done because in the bubbling cauldron of deuterated erbium another process is happening oppenheimer phillips yes this guy again some neutrons have successfully avoided being fused with other neutrons thus far and they're moving carefully through the electron fog secure in the knowledge that as long as they keep their heads down they'll be okay they don't really suspect any foul play yet or even when they feel themselves slowly changing orientation but their fate is already sealed their neutron has betrayed them along with the fog of electrons it obstructed their view to what was right ahead an erbium nucleus now a titanic struggle ensues where the strong nuclear force tries to overcome the coulombic barrier but the erbium finally captures the neutron flinging the proton away with huge kinetic energy so is this similar to what fleischmann and pawns found in their ill-fated coal fusion experiments in 1989 maybe but keep in mind that while this is not a confined reaction those gamma rays are not messing around and there is still a lot of questions around these experiments i don't have numbers for how much electrical energy was required to initiate the fusion reaction or how much thermal energy was finally produced if you do let me know and i'll pin the comment so we can understand how close to break even that is irbium looks pretty expensive but unlimited space travel is pretty tempting too fission is obvious in many ways it takes a ton of energy from neutron star collisions to make rare and heavy elements like thorium and uranium they are unstable and prefer to be smaller more manageable molecules not huge creaking mansions that are always fishing and breaking down fusion is a little weirder hydrogen helium all these are commonly occurring substances which are quite stable it's a little unintuitive that transmuting them would create energy that we can extract for useful work but i guess the laws of physics have no obligation to conform to our intuition personally i don't have great hopes for this technology just as yet i prefer more proof till i make a hype video about it but according to scientists it may one day power vehicles satellites spaceships and maybe even the grid i feel the word may is doing a lot of heavy lifting here but still there do seem to be some tricks glitches and loopholes through which we can eke out some energy from the seas maybe even enough for a humble existence i hope you guys enjoyed this video like share subscribe and start a conversation below to get more videos like this in your recommendation i'll see you really soon bye you

Channel: Tech for Luddites

Views: 633,207

Rating: 4.8686557 out of 5

Keywords: what is lattice confinement fusion, is lattice confinement fusion cold fusion, fleischmann, pons, did nasa confirm cold fusion, nasa cold fusion, what is bremstrahlung radiation, lattice confinement fusion explained

Id: RZcAnqCscIw

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/NearABE]

I am skeptical about the Alpha Centauri mission suggestion. This cannot be an open exhaust of charged particles. The ship's exhaust velocity will be exactly the same as any other ion drive. That might be good enough but if you have a fusion power supply the implication for life inside our solar system are significant.

My nuclear physics background may be weak. I would try to use this process to make a fission reactor. We would still be getting energy from the fission of uranium. The reactor core could be well below critical mass. The reaction stops when either we shut off the electron beam or when the crystal lattice fails.

[u/Uncle_Charnia]

Eight minutes to say something that takes ten seconds. That's how it is, though. You have to wade through it

[u/MiamisLastCapitalist]

Because her last video was so popular lol