This is my personal version of AI solving an advanced math problem.
I'm into deep future concepts, and have always dreamed about this sci-fi kind of open question. I will tell you that it is categorically not possible until the Opus or Sol level.
It took a few tries, but it has now returned to me a result that gives fuel cycle closure for this problem. That's a big deal to me.
What the heck is this problem? Imagine that the year is 2150 AD, and you are running out of Deuterium you harvest from the upper atmosphere of Saturn. Options like Helium-3 from the moon are far too small in abundance. If you can directly get energy from proton fusion, you are master of the Milky Way. The mechanism to do that is well-know, you fuse protons into Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen isotopes like how a star does it. But can you do it outside of a star? This idea (original AFAIK), is to use Deuterium mixed with other fluids in the fuel cycle (15N) to compress the target in a multi-stage thermonuclear detonation. There are a lot of problems, but the main that makes this "not impossible" is: can you do this and still produce surplus isotopes for the pusher fuel? On the speculative level, answer is "yes". This comes with a specific scale, which is a fuel ball <500 meters, blast chamber size of Earth. Room for improvement, but a great start.
This is a ferocious problem. It's a pleasure to be able to run the numbers on it.
yepyoukno•1h ago
Just remember kid, you don’t need full fusion.
You just need the protons to smash together to produce the anti particles and harvest the gamma release from there.
I’m thinking boot strap process where intense electromagnetic compression allows an inductive field to siphon off the columns of potential in as dense a target as capable. We can coerce spins through entanglement to get the smallest possible plane.
AlanSE•1h ago
I'm into deep future concepts, and have always dreamed about this sci-fi kind of open question. I will tell you that it is categorically not possible until the Opus or Sol level.
It took a few tries, but it has now returned to me a result that gives fuel cycle closure for this problem. That's a big deal to me.
What the heck is this problem? Imagine that the year is 2150 AD, and you are running out of Deuterium you harvest from the upper atmosphere of Saturn. Options like Helium-3 from the moon are far too small in abundance. If you can directly get energy from proton fusion, you are master of the Milky Way. The mechanism to do that is well-know, you fuse protons into Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen isotopes like how a star does it. But can you do it outside of a star? This idea (original AFAIK), is to use Deuterium mixed with other fluids in the fuel cycle (15N) to compress the target in a multi-stage thermonuclear detonation. There are a lot of problems, but the main that makes this "not impossible" is: can you do this and still produce surplus isotopes for the pusher fuel? On the speculative level, answer is "yes". This comes with a specific scale, which is a fuel ball <500 meters, blast chamber size of Earth. Room for improvement, but a great start.
This is a ferocious problem. It's a pleasure to be able to run the numbers on it.
yepyoukno•1h ago
You just need the protons to smash together to produce the anti particles and harvest the gamma release from there.
I’m thinking boot strap process where intense electromagnetic compression allows an inductive field to siphon off the columns of potential in as dense a target as capable. We can coerce spins through entanglement to get the smallest possible plane.
Electron killavolts here we come!