Teenager achieves nuclear fusion at home

[IChing]

3.6.2007
Radioactive Boy Scout

In 2006 Thiago Olson joined the extremely sparse ranks of amateurs worldwide
who have achieved nuclear fusion with a home apparatus. In other words,
he built the business end of a hydrogen bomb in his basement.
The plasma "star in a jar"—shown at the left—demonstrated his success.>>>>snip



Olson’s apparatus won’t work for generating commercial power because it takes more energy
to run than it produces. But he has succeeded in creating a “star in a jar,” a tiny flash of hot plasma.
“The temperature of the plasma is around 200 million degrees,
” Olson says modestly, “several times hotter than the core of the sun.”>>>snip

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/mar/radioactive-boy-scout

[DRoseDARs]

1. That his PARENTS allowed this is astonishing enough, let alone the government. n/t

[Dr.Phool]

2. Was this the April issue?

They've been known to pull a few "April fools" jokes.

I got taken in by an article a few years ago, about a heat generating rat that bored holes under the ice in Antartica and ate penguins.

[melody]

3. It says March

But I'm still hoping for an April Fools Joke.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

14. Crap, that was a joke?

I got taken in by the very same story. Told it for years afterwards.

[Botany]

4. Grain of salt time?

[MADem]

7. Nope--see post below. The story is a few months old, actually. NT

[Unca Jim]

5. Sorry to rain science on the parade...

but it's a very different thing to create a small amount of plasma by hyperexciting a few hydrogen atoms versus a hydrogen bomb.

He's not going to reach critical mass and have a dangerous reaction. In order to get enough hydrogen fusion to create the huge explosion of a hydrogen bomb, the energy of a carefully-shaped fission (old-school nuclear) bomb is required. This thing is about as dangerous as those plasma globe toys.

Still, it's serious science. Take a look at some of that equipment! Damn! I have a science-on! Seriously, one or both of his parents are probably engineers and work in some sort of high-end lab.

I say that not just because of the cost involved, but that the equipment he needed was available to him...although that pump looks like medical equipment and he could just be a gifted scavenger.


An aside: Every time someone says innovation and ingenuity are dead in America, I think of kids like this one. Wait'll we see what they can do...

[Dead_Parrot]

8. "I have a science-on!"

:spray:

[MADem]

6. This story has been around since at least last November

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/nov/19/teen_creates_nuclear_fusion_basement/

He’s on the cross country and track teams at Stoney Creek High School in Rochester Hills, Mich. He’s a good-looking, clean-cut 17-year-old with a 3.75 grade-point average, and he has his eyes fixed on the next big step: college.

But to his friends, Thiago is known as “the mad scientist.”

In the basement of his parents’ Oakland Township, Mich., home, tucked away in an area most aren’t privy to see, Thiago is exhausting his love of physics on a project that has taken him more than two years and 1,000 hours to research and build — a large, intricate machine that, on a small scale, creates nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fusion — when atoms are combined to create energy — is “kind of like the holy grail of physics,” he said.

On www.fusor.net, the Stoney Creek senior is ranked as the 18th amateur in the world to create nuclear fusion. How does he do it?....



To his mom and dad, he's still reminiscent of the 5-year-old who toiled over a kid-friendly chemistry set and, then at age 9, was able to change the battery in his older brother's car.

Now, in a small room in the basement, Thiago has set up a science lab -- where bottles marked "potassium hydroxide" and "methanol" sit on shelves and a worn, old book, titled "The Atomic Fingerprint: Neutron Activation Analysis" piled among others in the empty sink.

Thiago's mom, Natalice Olson, initially was leery of the project, even though the only real danger from the fusion machine is the high voltage and small amount of X-rays emitted through a glass window in the vacuum chamber -- through which Olson videotapes the fusion in action..

But, she wasn't really surprised, since he was always coming up with lofty ideas.

"Originally, he wanted to build a hyperbaric chamber," she said, adding that she promptly said no. But, when he came asking about the nuclear fusion machine, she relented....

http://research.lifeboat.com/teen.goes.nuclear.htm

[kestrel91316]

9. Seriously, who names their kid THIAGO???

[Dead_Parrot]

12. A Brazillion parents?

It's the Brazilian version of Jacob - via Portuguese and a few linguistic shifts (Greek 'Iacobus' - Iago - Tiago - Thiago)

:)

[kestrel91316]

13. Hm. That was very interesting. I am always curious about the

linguistic origins of words and names.......

[Javaman]

19. That's a lot of parents. must be mormans.

:rofl:

[NeoGreen]

10. Not likely...

200 million degrees?

Hmmm... and you are how far away?

Count me as highly skeptical.

[Botany]

11. My question too

He had to have had a magnetic field in order to suspend the plasma from touching
the side of the container.

But then again my physics stopped @ 9.8 meters per second per second squared
Speed @ which an object falls until it reach terminal velocity.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

15. Difference between temperature and heat.

Depending on a substances heat capacity and the amount of it there is, a high temperature can be briefly (on the order of microseconds) achieved without excessive heat.

[NeoGreen]

16. True, but...

... they had time to take a photo.

Seems that it lasted more then a few microseconds.

[Dogmudgeon]

17. 200 million is (relatively) easy

Sonoluminescence can produce such temperatures with 1880s technology. It relies on newly-elucidated acoustic principles. It is thought that very small-scale nuclear fusion is taking place.

Keep in mind, though, that these temperatures are produces for mere nanoseconds among small numbers of molecules. But the phenomenon is not too difficult to reproduce.

Evolution via natural selection was also once considered outlandish. It just goes to show that scientific discovery can be "cool!" -- or "weird!"

--p!

[Javaman]

18. Elroy freekin Jetson. nt