This was one of my favorite moments in ‘Oppenheimer’ In this scene, the physicist Isidor Rabi (portrayed by David Krumholz) tells Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) why he will not be coming to Los Alamos to work on the Manhattan Project. “When you drop a bomb,” Rabi says, “It falls on the just and the unjust. I […]
300 Years of Physics Read More »
The questions around finding viable source of fusion energy on Earth seem complex and technical. Actually, they are simple… and spiritual/metaphysical. It’s really a question about where we are on the arc of human evolution, and whether or not Homo Sapiens can ever get past its incipient ‘ape’ phase. This short video is excerpt from my
Introducing: the Excalibur Fusion Fund Now that we’ve got a tax exempt (501c3) non-profit organization it’s time to expand the scope. As I have written and discussed often, I got sucked into the Farnsworth story almost entirely because of this riddle: How do you bottle a star? Yes, I am endlessly fascinated by the origins
What’s A Measly Hundred Million? Read More »
Have you seen “Oppenheimer” yet? I saw it last week. There is an erudite discussion of the film here at the Waterstar sister site, Fusor.net, which includes my personal review of the film. Other fusor.net regulars add some interesting insight into the development of nuclear weapons and their aftermath. I also posted some thoughts about what
Oppenheimer, Einstein – and Farnsworth Read More »
In the ‘aughts – the years after the first first fusor.net forums were formed and I was researching The Boy Who Invented Television – Richard Hull went even deeper into the history of the fusor research and development effort in the 1960s. At the time, Farnsworth was employed as the Vice President for Research at
Pontiac Street: The History of The Fusor Read More »
Once I heard the story about The Boy Who Built A Clock, I wondered how long it would be before somebody made a connection between that and the people around the world who are building nuclear fusion reactors in their basements and garages. I got the answer to that this morning. On Facebook, of course:
Taylor, meet Ahmed; Ahmed, meet Taylor Read More »
Isn’t this the outfit that got a whole lot of press last year when they got some funding from one of Silicon Valley’s start-up incubators? “What Helion is trying to achieve is to shoot two plasma balls made of hydrogen atom cores at each other at one million miles per hour to collide within an
Yeah, That’s Sure To Work… Read More »
It’s always interesting to see what fusion research looked like in the early days…. …if for no other reason than because it affords some insight into just why, as Richard Hull (among others) is so fond of saying, “Fusion is 20 years in the future and always will be…” It is also intriguing to see
The Past is Prologue? Read More »
And I dare say it’s been a long time coming… News surfaced this past week that one of the world’s most prominent startup incubators, Y Combinator has taken a stake in a company called Helion, which insists that it will produce a break-even nuclear fusion process in three years: So it came as a surprise to
Fusion Finally Tempts The Startup Crowd Read More »
I really do need to keep better track of my daily Google Alerts. Unfortunately, I’ve become somewhat immune to them. The fusion alerts, in particular, are usually about the ITER or the NIF or some giant government funded fusion boondoggle. They show up in my inbox everyday, and I mostly ignore them. So I missed
Letterman Gets Fused Read More »
