Comment on Startup Claims Its Fusion Reactor Concept Can Turn Cheap Mercury Into Gold

Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• Stovetop@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Currently many orders of magnitude more expensive than just buying an equivalent amount of gold, but makes me wonder what the future might be capable of with those proofs of concept.

  Science circling back around to alchemy is an interesting thought.

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  • Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    If it is possible to make small amounts of those elements on purpose as a byproduct, it can help to offset the costs of the reactor in some small way and help with isotopic/nuclear research in general. But that can be done in pretty much any fusion reactor design to some degree.

    As for Alchemy of the future, If in a thousand years we can just built whatever materials we need (including potential ultra heavy stable elements) from raw subatomic particles we don’t even need mining, just gather up some hydrogen/helium from space and transmute it into whatever you need. food, fuel, structures, etc.

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    • LePoisson@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      just gather up some hydrogen/helium from space and transmute it into whatever you need. food, fuel, structures, etc.

      Tea, earl gray, hot.

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      • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        A gross of self-sealing stem bolts.

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    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      we don’t even need mining, just gather up some hydrogen/helium from space and transmute it into whatever you need. food, fuel, structures, etc.

      Believe it or not, this can actually be done without fusion alchemy.

      It’s been explored in science fiction and I believe there are some actual theories and papers on the subject, but here’s the quick version:

      The sun contains all the same elements found on earth in remarkably similar proportions (The exception being that all of earth’s hydrogen and helium were blown away long ago). But unlike earth, in the sun the heavy elements don’t separate and sink down to the core, everything just mixes together in one big suspension. Magnetic fields in the sun constantly eject charged particles out as solar wind and while these particles are mostly hydrogen, they actually contain every element found in the solar system. Because the particles are charged this wind could be harvested using magnetic fields, it could be redirected and focused into a stream of matter for collection.

      And it’s a lot of matter that could be collected this way… The sun loses 130 billion tons of matter in solar wind every day. For comparison, Mars’s moon Deimos masses about 1.5 trillion tons, so the sun loses a full Deimos worth of matter every 12 days.

      And my apologies for the long reply, someone mentioned space and I couldn’t help myself. 🤓

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      • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The sun loses 130 billion tons of matter in solar wind every day.

        But how much can be caught?

        From the sun, the angular diameter of the earth (12,756 km wide, 149,000,000 km away) is something like 0.004905 degrees (or 0.294 arc minutes or 17.66 arc seconds).

        Imagining a circle the size of earth, at the distance of the earth, catching all of the solar wind, we’re still looking at something that is about 127.8 x 10^6 square kilometers. A sphere the size of the Earth’s average distance to the sun would be about 279.0 x 10^15 square km in total surface area. So oversimplifying with an assumption that the solar wind is uniformly distributed, an earth-sized solar wind catcher would only get about 4.58 x 10^−10 of the solar wind.

        Taking your 130 billion tons number, that means this earth-sized solar wind catcher could catch about 59.5 tons per day of matter, almost all of which is hydrogen and helium, and where the heavier elements still tend to be lower on the periodic table. Even if we could theoretically use all of it, would that truly be enough to meet humanity’s mining needs?

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  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Humans sometimes run out of things to want.

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    • Stovetop@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I think gold could become a less coveted substance just in terms of value as a status symbol, but it could still benefit from being mass produced just due to its material properties. It’s a good conductor, doesn’t tarnish, is very malleable, etc.

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      • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Yes, it’s also a bit of an equalizer in terms of electronics production, if it becomes cheaper. One of my pipe dreams for the future is that such happens and makes it a bit more decentralized.

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  • ClanOfTheOcho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I admit, it wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card, either.

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