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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

"Fusion will save the world"
OK... how?

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:

If you want to talk logic and wishful ideas and politics then Both you and SECOND agree with each other on Fusion... and when did SECOND and you agree on anything of late?

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Originally posted by second:

I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977 when I was 25 years old. At that time, the Mechanical Engineering Dept. was working on a homopolar generator to provide the spark to ignite a fusion reaction.

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:

'homopolar motor' might have been the wrong direction it needs more than one technique perahps or maybe the 70s was too early and today we are on a different path since the 90s, breakthoughs in Japan, Italy, the DOE, US Army and Airforce and NASA with pleas for funding and many people have ignited the spark using a variety of methods. Do you think some of the highest mechanical engineer minds the French, China, European Union, Russia, Switzerland, the British, Thailand, Australia, Canada India, Japan, South Korea, United States are burning all this money just to feel good about 'magical thinking' if you did graduate in 1977 then science has moved on since those days.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh yeah, I forgot the example that started this train of thought:

"Ukraine is WINNING!"
OK.... HOW?

*****

There's another thing that confuses people (speaking of critical thinking) - there's a very big difference between asking "why" and asking "how"?

"Why" asks about motivation. There was a comedy skit that went "Why is there air?" and the answer was "To fill up basketballs, of course". Much MUCH easier to answer "HOW is there air?" because then you can describe the processes that we think generated air.

If "how" just doesn't seem to get to what you're trying to ask, then re-phrase the question into "What causes...?" because we often use the question "why?" when looking for a causal relation.
That's a problem with our language because it conflates two entirely separate ideas: motivation (or intention) and cause. Maybe it's a linguistic leftover from the days when we thought things happened "because" the god(s) willed it.


*****

One more source of confusion: "Truth" versus "honesty". Honesty means without the intention to deceive. You might be terriby wrong but painfully honest about something, but your explanation or description might not be "true" ... that is, consistent with reality. Unfortunately, for us the opposite of "lie" is often means "truth" when it should be "honesty". So when people tell me that they're telling me "the truth" all they're trying to say is that they deeply, deeply feel something or are convinced of something and are honestly expressing those deep feelings or thoughts. But deep feelings or convictions aren't a substitute for being correct (consistent with reality) and I think this fundamental confusion doesn't allow people to separate their deeply held feelings and thoughts from what might be "out there", really.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Reading the many examples of "magical thinking" here, I've come to the conclusion that magical thinkers fail to ask- and answer- one VERY important question:

"How???"

"Saddam poses an immediate threat to the United States!"
OK.... how? (When I checked, he was way over there and his missiles couldn't have made it halfway to Europe.)

"Saddam might have secretly shipped his WMD program to Syria."
OK... how?

"Russia is going to upend western democracy!"
OK... how? It seems to me that the only people who can do that to us is us. And our fearless leaders seem to be doing a pretty good job of it


"Fusion will save the world"
OK... how?

"EVs will save the world"
"Industrial carbon capture...carbon trading... fill on your favorite ideology here... will save the world"

Maybe.... somehow...
Yanno, when people see a magic trick their first question is "How did they DO that??". They don't tell themselves that it must be magic! But when people propose something that "maybe... somehow... something will happen" they don't ask or answer the question HOW?

A little more real world thinking in a forum dedicated to real world events would be appropriate.

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
6IXSTRING and SIGNYM I will avoid politics because I see it mostly as a web of lies be the news from the British or French or Russian or news from the USA it is mostly a mix of distortion so there is no point to discuss 'the truth' of these propaganda broadcasts.

SIGNYM sometimes you need to learn when you were wrong, for example you got it almost completely wrong with Elon Musk's rockets. I also admit I have got stuff wrong and made bad predictions but we can still learn and admit our own errors or admit when we might have seen something not entirely true. Elon Musk has done something amazing for the Private Spaceflight Commericial Sector

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even while being politically hated by the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Admin he has shown his value like Ford, Howard Hughes, Alexander Graham Bell, Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, Wernher von Braun, Mary Anderson, Ann Kiessling, Samuel Morse and so many other free market ideas and thinking people. [

If you want to talk logic and wishful ideas and politics then Both you and SECOND agree with each other on Fusion... and when did SECOND and you agree on anything of late?

"Originally posted by SIGNYM:
"Fusion will save the world"
OK... how?"

Its not 'magic' and I for one never claimed it would save the world but it can make life easier,

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but EVs ... I will hold out for now as I'm not sure its good or bad at the moment, the electric car does also give pollution with those nasty acids and mining and batteries but it does offer different energy security than depending on islamist jihadi Saudi.

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Sources of power? The Sun is an almost never ending Nuclear bomb, the USA tested some big bombs but Tsar Bomba is the single most physically powerful device ever tested by Soviets the shock wave went around the world three times, the Sun's bomb is much bigger or 1,820,000,000 Tsar Bombas – I guess you could put a station on Mercury and just beam power from the Sun to the Moon or Earth...but that's another complex system to build.

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Fusion does really require 'Faith' it can be done it it requires investment and optimism

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Now let's take for example 2 things in our human history, Iron and Heat/Energy, 'Iron' can be recycled
Re-use of Iron is real
its not some weird magic amazing particle or material you see in a scifi that hits or blasts power and vanishes like a magic spell
but in real life the Element Iron 'Fe' can be recycled and used again however to do this it requires work, energy, heat
Iron is not an exotic scifi particle that vanishes, it is not burnt up and chemically transformed into the air into a another gaseous form.
The Iron we had Greece, Egypt, Europe, spreading Asia it is phase, of three, in the Metal Ages, none of this 'Iron' has truly been used up, it only needs work and heat to reuse it.

We can create heat by burning 4 bags of Wood let's say or one big bag of Coal....
a better way might be to use power from a source of Fission reaction, lets say Salt materials, Granite, silicate minerals, Soil...you can mine stones and take out a percentage of Uranium.

Now let's go back to those Bags of Wood or Bags of Coal or a Big Barrel Oil burning
if you have a good stove and are very efficient in a moderate climate,
maybe some small 'magic' castle with good insulation that is very energy efficient and does not allow heat to escape then that one bag of coal might heat your home for an entire month! Very good heat!

However one bag of natural 'Uranium' is a far better power source than Wood or Oil or Coal – following enrichment and used for power generation corresponds to nearly 10,000 Barrels of oil, yes Ten Thousand or 14,000 Thousand Big Massive Bags of Coal

With this new Nuclear Fission source you now have option to Heat not just 1 Home for 1 month but to heat 14,000 Homes instead or you can heat 1 home instead of heating it for one month you can heat it for 14,000 Months or 1,166 Years!

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'Fusion' is somewhat real and is happening now but at the very small scale, it is like the early ideas of invention in the USA or even further back in time when people in Europe and China were building little boats and moving between field and river kingdoms, it is not even at the age of Vikings or the Venetian navy ...little boats would later turn into huge Cargo ships traveling the Globe, 'Fusion' is at the little boat stage but Fusion can improve. The Negative Nancy or Debbie Downer or old Pessimism Man if you send them back in time they might think looking at the Wright Bothers plane flying for only 59 seconds, what a waste of time and energy!

'Fusion' if and when it is cracked it gives 3-4 times more energy than fission

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So now in a future of Cold Fusion, you could power 49,000 Homes with one bag of let's call it 'Fusion Stuffs'
Or you could have heated one home or castle instead of one month, heat the home for up to 4,081 Years!

Now think of how many factories using energy to recycle Iron

Did I mention it is a more natural process like 'The Sun' and not as dirty as Fission and does not create any long-lived radioactive nuclear waste.

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:

'homopolar motor' might have been the wrong direction it needs more than one technique perahps or maybe the 70s was too early and today we are on a different path since the 90s, breakthoughs in Japan, Italy, the DOE, US Army and Airforce and NASA with pleas for funding and many people have ignited the spark using a variety of methods. Do you think some of the highest mechanical engineer minds the French, China, European Union, Russia, Switzerland, the British, Thailand, Australia, Canada India, Japan, South Korea, United States are burning all this money just to feel good about 'magical thinking' if you did graduate in 1977 then science has moved on since those days.

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I have too much experience with "geniuses" making false claims because of their enormous egos about breakthroughs that are almost, but quite, here. After a few hundred billion dollars of research spending, I'd expect more from the fusion energy community than what they have actually accomplished. Meanwhile, solar energy technology is generating fusion power right now. And battery technology to store the fusion energy is moving along at a reasonable pace. But we live in a world where people are unexcited by real tech that works and the world prefers "magical" tech.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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In addition to updating its terms of use and arbitration rules, there are three significant changes that will affect how much you pay to use the Electrify America network once the new rules take effect.

Three main pricing changes:

1. The monthly fee to be a Pass+ subscriber is going up from $4.00 to $7.00. That translates to an additional $36 per year ($84 per year compared to the previous $48/year), Pass+ members will still get a 25% discount on the per-kWh or per-minute price, depending on what state they are charging in.

2. Electrify America is transitioning from set pricing across the country to a station-specific pricing model that is subject to change. The Electrify America app will show the station-specific prices, the company is urging its members to always check the station for pricing when they arrive because it's possible the price listed in the app may be incorrect.

3. Electrify America will begin to charge idle fees at most of its locations nationwide. After a ten-minute grace period, the customer will be billed $0.40 per minute until they unplug the vehicle from the charger.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Speaking of EV's, here's another I TOLD YOU SO from my limitless bag of them.


Electrify America Is Completely Changing Its Pricing Structure

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Speaking of EV's, here's another I TOLD YOU SO from my limitless bag of them.


Electrify America Is Completely Changing Its Pricing Structure

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Electrify America is price gouging its customers because it has only 822 charging stations, the only one for many miles around.

https://www.electrifyamerica.com/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Lettuce sea.

In order to "prove" or "Identify" that a person has Acquired IMMUNE DEFICIENCY Syndrome, we only need to perform a test which we will call the results "HIV Positive" - and this label of "HIV Positive" is the test which proves that the body's IMMUNE SYSTEM worked perfectly by creating the ANTIBODY after exposure to the unrelated HIV.
Yes, the "HIV Positive" designation merely defines that the ANTIBODY of the HIV is present in the blood - which would not happen if the IMMUNE SYSTEM was not working.

To prove that the IMMUNE SYSTEM is NOT working, we test and prove that the IMMUNE SYSTEM IS working.

Magical Thinking?

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Originally posted by second:

Meanwhile, solar energy technology is generating fusion power right now. And battery technology to store the fusion energy is moving along at a reasonable pace.

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Originally posted by second:

Until people recognize and admit that all of these are, in fact, “real Islam”, the issues underlying the problem of jihadi militancy cannot be addressed. If the violence is “not real Islam”, the implication is that Islam – as practiced by most Muslims – needs no reform. But that is manifestly not the case. The scourge of violence in the name of Islam will be removed only when Muslims in general come to reject all instances of violence in the name of Islam, including those that are celebrated in scripture and history. When conquerors who killed “infidels” are regarded as heroes of the faith; when the world is seen as divided into the “house of Islam” and the “house of war”

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Well, amazingly SECOND, we agree!!!!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Okay, to qualify my negative assessment on fusion - it's a technology that MIGHT solve our energy problems. I think we could be looking at 10-50 years in the future.

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'Cold Fusion' the Taboo Clean Energy Topic

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... and maybe if there was less fear of Nuclear they could have invested in [a] future possibility like 'Fusion'.

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Does it require Faith or Not...maybe Optimistic and Logic thought and not Pessimism and Nihilism

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i for one never claimed it would save the world but it can make life easier

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Fusion does really require 'Faith' it can be done it it requires investment and optimism

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In 1983 a scientist by the name of Kary Mullis was driving along a Californian mountain road late one night and formulated a revolutionary way to make laboratory copies of DNA molecules https://passel2.unl.edu/view/lesson/d81d0eedbada/2

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William (Bill) Yeager is 66 and still gets peeved when someone trots out the Silicon Valley fable about how the founders of Cisco invented the router. He was the guy at Stanford University who made it happen. https://www.networkworld.com/article/2309917/lan-wan-router-man.html

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:

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Originally posted by second:

Meanwhile, solar energy technology is generating fusion power right now. And battery technology to store the fusion energy is moving along at a reasonable pace.

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Solar is great if you live in parts of Africa, California, Mexico, the Gobi Desert China, Chile South America, the Middle East, Australia or Texas but the rest of the USA Idaho, New York, Oregon, Maine, Ohio, the city of Chicago, Indiana, South Dakota, North Dakota, the Great Lakes, Kentucky, Minnesota, the entire of Canada and Quebec Solar isn't going to cut it also the US population and power demands are increasing not decreasing and increasing beyond the capacity of Solar power

also America does not build the stuff, a lot of it made in China

Second another problem I have with your writing is I do not know if you truly believe anything, from one day one week to the next one year to next you can flip flop between anything.

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Originally posted by second:

I need something that is real and now. I don’t need worthless promises about a future that may never arrive.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Their discvoeries began with asking the question "HOW?" It's a far tougher question to answewr than you think, and it keeps us in the very real world.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yes, HOW can you "beam [useful amounts] of power", from one planet to another? Anything other than a laser would just disperse

A laser bean strong enough to draw power from would fry everything it touched

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a test to deliver 10 kilowatts of laser power across 200 km (125 miles)

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A wireless energy web could unlock power from new and diverse sources, including from space, and rapidly and reliably connect them to energy-starved consumers.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I think what we have is a PEOPLE problem. And not people in general, just SOME people. A small minority, if you will. If you want to solve most of our problems, solve the human sociopath problem first. Figure out how to keep power from concentrating in so few (malign) hands.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think what we have is a PEOPLE problem. And not people in general, just SOME people. A small minority, if you will. If you want to solve most of our problems, solve the human sociopath problem first. Figure out how to keep power from concentrating in so few (malign) hands.


SECIND: Signym, your version of reality [is] If the sociopath Prime Minister is killed, life in the 'Verse will become wonderful once again

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think what we have is a PEOPLE problem. And not people in general, just SOME people. A small minority, if you will. If you want to solve most of our problems, solve the human sociopath problem first. Figure out how to keep power from concentrating in so few (malign) hands.


SECIND: Signym, your version of reality [is] If the sociopath Prime Minister is killed, life in the 'Verse will become wonderful once again

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SECOND, are you projecting your fear that an irate mob will come for you with pitchforks and flambeaux??



Your stupidity never fails to amuse!

First of all, PLEASE RE-READ WHAT I WROTE. This time maybe with comprehension .

Did I say anything about killing anyone?

Yanno, in the years that you've been here, you seem to have gotten stupider and stupider. You must be following in Biden's footsteps.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Magic belief?

Richard Feynman — the world from another point of view

https://twitter.com/whitepill_pw/status/1702337898903970222

As a child, Richard Feynman showed signs of skepticism. For example, when he found out Santa Claus wasn't real, he said he was relieved — the truth was much easier to explain than a story of a man delivering millions of gifts to millions of kids in one night.

In 1975, Feynman learned about Uri Geller, who claimed he could bend spoons with his mind. Given his natural skepticism about such things, Feynman managed to meet Geller at a Hollywood hotel. The meeting was a resounding failure for Geller, who failed to demonstrate his supposedly paranormal abilities

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yes, HOW can you "beam [useful amounts] of power", from one planet to another? Anything other than a laser would just disperse

A laser bean strong enough to draw power from would fry everything it touched

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DARPA looks to laser to beam power across the world
https://newatlas.com/technology/darpa-laser-beam-power-across-distance
s/

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a test to deliver 10 kilowatts of laser power across 200 km (125 miles)

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they say it is not a Death-Star

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A wireless energy web could unlock power from new and diverse sources, including from space, and rapidly and reliably connect them to energy-starved consumers.

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In elonmusk
's biography by WalterIsaacson
, a detail emerges about his senior paper at the University of Pennsylvania.

https://twitter.com/whitepill_pw/status/1704228267585351919

The paper, which he wrote in 1994, titled "The Importance of Being Solar," presented a vision: a satellite would use mirrors to focus sunlight onto panels, which would then convert this sunlight into electricity. A microwave beam would then send this electricity back to Earth.

In January 2023, CalTech's Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) independently made a similar vision a reality. Their spacecraft, SSPD-1, launched with the aim of capturing solar energy in space and beaming it back to Earth. The craft successfully generated power on the ground, using a microwave power array to transfer the energy to Earth from orbit, which lit up a pair of LEDs on the roof of a Caltech lab in Pasadena.

Prescient.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

If you do, let me know!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

we need to keep hope in the future alive, and believing that things can get better. If we don't, then even if there are improvements that can be made, we won't make them

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

If you do, let me know!

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We already collect and re-direct this energy everyday, they are called lightning strikes maybe 5 Billion Watts of energy in a single second, sometimes enough juice to power a small village or town, the Earth has I dunno something like 200 Million cloud-to-ground strikes per year.

Lightning Rods

We can redirect it into the ground, but we are not good at keep it at the moment putting it into a small battery that spike in energy would cause it to explode.
Metric Prefix
Kilo Thousand, Mega Million, Giga Billion, Tera Trillion 10^12 I think next is Quadrillion Peta? We already collect and re-direct energy in the 'Giga'
That is not to say in the future some special battery or way of keeping this energy will never be made



as you said yourself

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

we need to keep hope in the future alive, and believing that things can get better. If we don't, then even if there are improvements that can be made, we won't make them

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
JAYNZE... LIGHTNING RODS? SERIOUSLY?

Lighting strike move gigawatts of energy, but ONLY for a few seconds, at most. If that were to be sustained for longer, it would vaporize the lightning rod.

You can't equate gigawatts of energy that lasts for a second versus gigawatts of energy flowing for 24 hours .

If you were to beam that from space, you would create a continuous plasma column of air, just like lightning but lasting 24/7/365.

In addition, HOW can you beam energy from one planet to another. Planets rotate. They also revolve. How can you keep the source and target aligned??

Dood, THAT is magical thinking. A little physics and real world experience goes a long way to screen out false hopes and fruitless pursuits. Stop magical thinking about technology.

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China could now be spending $1.5 billion each year on fusion — almost double what the US government allocated this year for this research, says Jean Paul Allain, associate director of the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences in Washington DC. “Even more important than the total value is the speed at which they’re doing it,” says Allain.

“China has built itself up from being a non-player 25 years ago to having world-class capabilities,” says Dennis Whyte, a nuclear scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.

Although no one yet knows whether fusion power plants are possible, Chinese scientists have ambitious timelines. In the 2030s, before ITER will have begun its main experiments, the country aims to build the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), with the goal of producing up to 1 gigawatt of fusion power. If China’s plans work out, a prototype fusion power plant could follow in the next few decades, according to a 2022 road map

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:


In addition, HOW can you beam energy from one planet to another. Planets rotate. They also revolve. How can you keep the source and target aligned??

Dood, THAT is magical thinking. A little physics and real world experience goes a long way to screen out false hopes and fruitless pursuits. Stop magical thinking about technology.

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Originally posted by second:

. . . if we could design a battery that would not be vaporized by the strike, all the lightning in the world would still power only a small fraction of households. It’s true that each stroke produces up to perhaps five or ten gigajoules of energy, and a household in the U.S. needs only about five gigajoules per month—and that’s just one strike! But actually, only a fraction of that energy is in the form of electrical current—much of the energy goes to heating the air. And the process of storing the energy in a battery and then retrieving it is pretty inefficient.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
In addition, HOW can you beam energy from one planet to another. Planets rotate. They also revolve. How can you keep the source and target aligned??

Dood, THAT is magical thinking. A little physics and real world experience goes a long way to screen out false hopes and fruitless pursuits. Stop magical thinking about technology.

JAYNZE: Planets Rotate don't worry they have a science for that even backyard amateur astronomer took pics of a moving Space Station or Space Shuttle, its very user friendly and you don't need a Master Doctor Degree paper in Orbital Mechanics the amateur can do it and I'm sure there's an app on your phone now. Hubble does it all the time when it looks for an Asteroid or takes a pic of Mars or Hubble’s Observation of Neptune, satellites do it when they send info back to a point on Earth

and keeping the sources and target aligned, they did this since the early 1960s after Sputnik the USA had Telstar 1 now a defunct satellite but it allowed the first live broadcast of television images between the United States and Europe.
quote: Nasa has streamed an ultra high-definition video of a cat back to Earth from the depths of space.

The 15-second clip of Taters the cat was sent via laser - and fittingly shows it chasing a laser beam.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

But if you're beaming significant amounts... USEFUL amounts ... of enery to earth, maybe something in the gigawatt or terawatt range... the beam would vaporize anything it touched that wasn't specifically constructed to be able to absorb and withstand that amount of energy. Not to mention the beam itself passing thru the atmo would probably create a column of plasma from the outer atmo to the earth's surface. Imagine the climate disruption from THAT!

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Dood, think about it. Seriously. It's one thing to transmit a video to earth. The energies are so small, if you miss your target ... hey, no harm, no foul.

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