Diamond Bullet Fired at 1000 Km/S Could Produce Nuclear Fusion, Chinese Researchers Say

Let's do it and measure it.

Nuclear fusion - Electricity so cheap you won't even meter it!!

Wait, wasn't that nuclear fission from 40 years ago? Shoot.

@SLNuke87 - I think the phrase you're looking for is:

"We will make electricity so cheap, only the rich will burn candles" ...lol

"1-cubic-millimeter-diameter"

Which is it, a cubic millimeter in volume or a millimeter diameter?

Clearly this can never be allowed. Energy corps would lose profits. Nothing that threatens oil consumption will ever be allowed to happen.

lets accelerate the methane to 1000km/s and launch it at a stationary diamond, ya-know just for kicks...

I wish you weren't right old-scratch.

"a net energy gain" except that it uses FREAKING DIAMONDS!!! Hello?!

Chinese leader to staff: "Okay, the Americans are running out of money to send us, what do we do now?"

Staff Secretary to Chinese leader: "We could get them to start sending us gold and diamonds instead"

Chinese Leader to Staff Secretary: "Excellent idea! How can we do that?"

Staff secretary: "Leave that to me sir, our top scientists have a cunning plan..."

@aryeh, you are forgetting that these diamonds are very small, and diamond growing technologies are becoming more advanced than ever.

@aryeh5761: industrial diamonds are cheap and plentiful. Not at all the same as gemstones you might wear on a ring.

And they said Diamonds are Forever!

If "Diamond Bullet" doesn't make a good title for a James Bond movie, I can see one as a plot device in one of those films.

So this would take the carbon atoms of the diamond and fusion would occur with the Hydrogen of the methane or the Carbon of the methane to make either Nitrogen and/or Magnesium?

screw this 'theoretically it's possible' crap. dont tell us about it, just do it.

like lebron, just pick already goddammit...

That is almost 2.25 million Miles Per Hour. No problem.
Only possible problem with fusion is heating up all that water. I guess we could use the excess electricity to cool the water to discharge levels. I guess we have to heat up water the way it is now anyways. Yeah, I know about Hydro, Solar, Wind, .... Sure beats oil spills in the gulf.

Why haven't any of these scientists come up with a device that incorporates multiple or all energy collection methods?

Where's the electric car with tiny wind turbines on the vents to collect wind energy in addition to solar panels on the roof, recovering energy while braking and harvesting energy as the wheels spin?

I'll take a ding on the drag coefficient for a car I can recharge as I'm rolling down a hill.

I'm grateful for these breakthroughs, but I wish there wasn't always such a singleminded focus with these solutions.

I also want to live in a naive little word where the idea that wealthy people/companies could just buy these breakthroughs and sit them on a shelf doesn't exist.

*Sigh...*

@Vega If you're into engineering, you'll learn about the laws of thermodynamics in college. Basically you'd be wasting a lot of energy by putting turbines on the car bc of the weight and resistance they'd put against propelling your car forward. Same with generators in the wheels. I agree it can be a little counter intuitive, but it's how things are. *shrug*
However, you're right about regenerative breaking as there is a lot of waste heat there, as well as the solar panels. Those are just financial hurdles to be overcome.

So, does any of the diamond survive the collision to be reused later? Extreme heat would burn up the diamond if oxygen was present, but I'm guessing there would be no oxygen involved in this process.

Does the diamond have to be 1 cubic millimeter? Couldn't the diamond be smaller to produce smaller amounts of energy? I think that this could be something that's within our grasp of doing. Or, trying at least.

Vega,

Regenerative breaking is used on some electric vehicle. However, this can only recapture a small part of the energy used to propel the vehicle, most of the energy used is lost due to friction. Roof mounted solar cells could run your radio and AC, but can not produce any near enough power to run passenger car at high way speeds. Wind turbine in the grill would create more drag then energy and reduce efficiency.

If there was an easy fix, it would have been done already.

I dunno about the turbine causing that much drag, have
you ever stuck a fan out the window, doesn't seem like
it has any effect on vehicle performance, i say test
so we can get practical results not jump to conclusions based on theory alone.

No to say that it will be 100% efficient, just that at least we should try and make the most aerodynamically friendly and as friction free as possible turbine wheel/fan
as possible and deploy it on moving vehicle to test.

Vega does seem to miss the point, heck the entire concept, of thermodynamics when he suggests wind turbines on the roof.

But *get this*:

When you press lightly on the brakes, a "vent" opens that allows air into a pass-through running from the front of the car to the back. A turbine in the pass-through generates power while (and because) it generates energy from the quickly-flowing air.

It would be interesting to know whether this method has any efficiency advantage over regenerative breaking. The mechanism itself would be lightweight and cheap...and the more we refine the default aerodynamics of a vehicle body, the greater the difference will be when the vent is opened, so improvements in one aspect of design positively feedback with another area of design.

If we get to the point of putting electromagnetic motors directly on the wheels (or a wheel-individualized axle very close to the wheel itself), then it is unlikely that it will be worth it to add an aerodynamic brake. Until then, though, looking at the trade-offs would at least be an interesting study.

.......
Now, to address Cholin/Electrix:

no, adding a turbine behind the grill wouldn't reduce efficiencies, so any energy gained would be a bonus.

However, the energy gained would be less than the energy saved by *eliminating* the grill.

Thus, if you create ways to harness energy which is now wasted as heat, you can cool the engine by generating power that you wouldn't otherwise have. The available energy in this waste heat is more than the available energy of wind that has entered the grill. But not only that, if you can transform enough of that waste heat into usable energy, you no longer need to cool the engine. Even if you can't ditch *that much* heat, for every bit of heat you do transform, you can make the grill that much smaller & the vehicle that much more aerodynamic.

Again, you have positive feedback where every improvement in capturing heat generates a corresponding improvement in aerodynamic performance.

Avoiding having to slow down the air you move through is more efficient than slowing it down but turning 30% of that deceleration into electricity.

In otherwords, it is better to *not* spend $1000 than it is to get a tax break that says if you spend $1000, you get $300 back. Even with the tax break, you still are out 700 bucks!

Curiously, the gains are largest for the vehicles that it would seem are least likely to gain - Long haul trucks.

Since they spend so much of their time moving at highway speeds, and since their big engines waste so much heat while having comparatively little surface area, they need massive grills to air-cool the thing.

This means they have a lot of potential for capturing waste heat AND a lot of potential for improving the aerodynamics. While the sheer size of the trailer does limit the top-end aerodynamic performance, they are still very far from that limit because of the blunt and very large grill needed.

This is also where companies can pay a lot of money to add expensive, untested technology. If we know there's a benefit, but it's too new to know exactly how big that benefit it is or whether or not it will cause maintenance costs to go up, we need businesses like long-haul trucking who've been hit hard by fuel costs that will be able to say, "yeah, they *think* it'll save 12% on fuel costs, but even if it only saves 1%, it will pay off in 3 years and then save us money for a few more, so let's do it."

I'm looking forward to some truly cool new engines being tested in long-haul vehicles before they come to the mainstream.

--)->

@ Aryeh:
Your previous critics pointed out "industrial diamonds are different" and such, but neglected your central point. they say they're generating net energy, but how much energy does it take to make and/or mine and transport a diamond to the generator.

If you read the original article, you would know that when they say that it generates net energy, they include the energy required to synthesize the diamond.

They do *not* include the energy to transport the diamond, but the synthesis energy is vastly larger than any other energy in the process.

They *don't* include the energy required to build the reactor, to staff it, to feed the staff, etc. Only the energy required to make the fuel and perform the operations (mainly acceleration) of the generator. But if each reaction generates a large net positive, you can create the appropriate scale to get *industrial efficiency* - as opposed to reaction efficiency.

............................
@Penguin -
You remark at the incredible speeds involved.

yes, the speeds *are* incredible. They are so fast that we really can't conceive of them. But still, they are talking about
c/300

when we currently use accelerators that reach speeds in excess of c/1.0001

What is being asked is no great shakes in terms of final speed achieved by a linear accelerator. The only thing novel about it is that most accelerators don't bother to accelerate clumps of matter that contain near as much mass/as many atoms (nuclei).

For those people who think this will require some huge apparatus, in fact we now have accelerators that literally fit on a table top that accelerate particles far past the speeds needed here. They use lasers and capture particles with light, transferring energy. There are details which make me question whether or not they would be useful here, but the problems with the laser approach might be possible to engineer around. That would make construction costs much cheaper and - more importantly - make the device small enough to fit on a small space ship.

I look forward to experiments using this technology, as well as the upcoming (2011?) tests of General Fusion's upcoming scale model of a utility-grade fusion generator. While the scale model would not be economically efficient or ready for long term operation as part of the grid, if the scale model works, the concept is proven and *will* work at the utility scale. The only parts not included in the scale model are things with which utilities already have vast experience.

why do I bring that up here: GF's technology *also* uses shockwaves to generate fusion pressure/temperature combinations that ITER and other experiments are attempting to achieve using magnetic containment, lasers and other expensive and unproven methods.

From my point of view, mechanical-shock fusion seems to be the tech to bet on.

--)->

"Which is it, a cubic millimeter in volume or a millimeter diameter?"

Perhaps it's a four-dimensional object with a diameter or a cubic millimeter? :-)

"Why haven't any of these scientists come up with a device that incorporates multiple or all energy collection methods?"

Because it's a crap idea.

"Where's the electric car with tiny wind turbines on the vents to collect wind energy[...]"

Because any energy you collect necessarily comes at the expense of slowing the car down. As the wind turbine reduces air flow through the intake you need a bigger intake, which necessarily increases drag.

For a an aerodynamic car the wheels and the mirrors produce more drag then the entire rest of the body. It's not insignificant.

"[...]in addition to solar panels on the roof"

Your car uses tens of kilowatts of energy; the 100-200 W or so you'd get in a desert at noon will not make up for the increased drag of installing conventional solar panels on a vehicle.

A car is about the worst place to put solar panels; if you can at all avoid it you will normally try to not park in direct illumination from the sun.

There is an opportunity cost; if you waste solar panels on cars you have less of them for uses that actually matter.

"[...]recovering energy while braking and harvesting energy as the wheels spin?"

Essentially all EVs have regenerative breaking.

"I'll take a ding on the drag coefficient for a car I can recharge as I'm rolling down a hill."

You're just running the electric motor in reverse as a generator; it should have no impact on your drag coefficient.

@ Electrix:

Sure, A free turbine on a shaft will have very little friction because it's free rotating. But to generate any form of energy, you will need to connect it to a generator. The generator have both mechanical and electrical inefficiencies, and will require energy input to generate power. Look at it this way, the wind turbine-generator assembly to generate electricity is not generating power per se, rather, it is a transformation of rotational (mechanical) energy to electrical energy. Energy must be conserved in any process for a fixed boundary system given there is no chemical or nuclear reactions.

The collision's peak energy is 4 petawatts, at a rate of 1.5 petawatts over 40 nanoseconds. That's four quadrillion watts. Even Superman would be turned to plasma.

Don't know of any material that can handle that temperature and the magnetic disconnect if using magnetic containment would be even higher temp. when it collapsed back on itself.

Too many simplistic assumptions will bite them in the ass.

Just make sure they do this in the Gobi desert.

TR, seems like you understood my view, a free turning turbine has very little friction, yes, the losses connecting it to a generator... I can understand that,
i just feel let's make a super efficient generator ! But
that's probably pushing the tech further than it can be currently developed. So ok fine i'll take it as not efficient friendly......for now.

In the meantime we should come up with new ideas to generate electricity... I'm sure we will.

bicrip,

Using wind turbines for regenerative breaking would require adding a lot of equipment to the car which would add weight and volume. A DC motor can also act like a DC generator when it is forced to turn by an external torque. The only thing you need is a motor controller that can feed that power back tot he battery. This is a far more practical solution then trying to wind turbines.

I have done vast research in this field and the element crystal methane needs to be replaced with cesium heated at 132 degrees, to get the desired effects. Cesium has the worlds largest atoms which allows the protons easier access to be bonded with other elements to create easier energy fusion.