As I was saying:  Fusion falters under soaring costs. Some scientists also believe that the technical hurdles to fusion have become more difficult to overcome and that the development of fusion as a commercial power source is still at least 100 years away. At a meeting in Japan on Wednesday, members of the governing Iter […]

This article originally appeared in the IEEE Spectrum back in March, 2009, but is only now available online: …. it’s pretty simple, according to Paul Schatzkin, who runs Fusor.net, a Web site where amateur ”fusioneers” congregate to swap equipment and advice: ”Find two stainless steel half-spheres, seal them together around a wire grid, suck the

Maybe the worst thing that ever happened in the annals of fusion research was the announcement of the discovery of “cold fusion” back in 1989. Now, whenever I mention the subject to somebody, invariably the answer is “oh, you mean ‘cold fusion’?  Well, no, that’s NOT what I mean.  Now CBS has breathed new life into

Unfortunately, he discovered it at the National Ignition Facility, where they can spend tens of millions of dollars on a single burst of fusion produced by a finely-tune array of nearly 200 laser beams: Hang around long enough and you’ll even hear that in another 10 or 20 years hydrogen-powered cars or fusion energy will

I'm still getting static (in the form of snarky comments) to that "Nobel Laureates Endorse Obama" post from a couple of months ago, so I'm leery of making "political" posts in this this space.  But this isn't politics, it's just "news."  (And rather old news at that, the dateline is like 10 days ago….) WASHINGTON

The release of the new movie "Flash of Genius" has brought the subject of  How Inventors Always Get Screwed into the daily media diet. BTW, if you don’t know about Armstrong, you should read Lawrence Lessing’s (he’s not the Internet Lessig) 1956 biography, "Man of High Fidelity." The book is sadly out of print (old

Assembled at HEAS 08: Standing: Q, Eric Stroud, Bill Fain, Dave Rosignoli, Alex Kingsbury; Seated: The Perfesser, Richard Hull, Raymond Jimenez.

What’s that old line about men, boys, and the price of their toys.

This is what a miniature artificial star looks like. You can only see it on a video screen.

High Energy Amateur Scientists watch as Richard Hull runs his “star in a jar” nuclear fusion reactor. Meanwhile, the big ITER machine in Europe — the multi-billion dollar boondoggle, is broken.