I've been in Austin, Texas for the past week shooting a buckyballs
with the equivalent of 200x the power of the US Energy grid per shot
in a project that's a collaboration with UT Austin, Ohio State, and
Columbia University. I call it NanoFusion and it may or may not be
worth anything but I've put a lot of time and money and energy into it
and learned a lot and traveled the world in the process. We're the
first people to ever try using a nanoscale molecular container to
pressurize deuterium to fusion conditions. The past 50 years of
fusion research has primarily been via plasmas like the sun
(thermonuclear). Fusion from a pressure perspective (pycnonuclear) is
not really well understood. Ask a physicist how hard you have to
squeeze a molecule of deuterium to get it to fuse they'll tell you how
hot it has to be which of course is a bad answer. And there are
multiple papers that show that plasma based systems will never scale
to power plant levels because they're inherently unstable. The sun
can do fusion for power because gravity essentially free input power.
So at lunch the other day Dr. Storm from Ohio says the laser is
working remarkably well, and somethings probably going to break. He
also mentions a hilarious anecdote about was when he was at a bar
previously in the month and there was a dog sitting on a stool
drinking beer. Later that day the 1064 nm laser diode that's used for
aligning the big laser breaks. According to the scientists it's a
cheap little laser but getting a replacement over a long weekend is
going to be very hard.
So we go downton on 6th street and just get hammered at this bar
called 512 and we close it down.
So with nothing better to do today Davy and I go to this houseboat
flotilla party on Lake Travis that is organized by the owner of 512.
We get a ride back into town with these super cool people and stop by
this little pub because they had pizza downstairs and discover there
is a bar upstairs.
And the place is pretty empty but we go up to the bar and get beers.
This dog on the floor just chilling and I don't think anything of it
since I've seen them at a few other bars. And the lady next to me
says do you mind if she sits on this stool next to you. And I'm like
yeah of course that would be cool. And then the bartender pours some
beer into a plastic plate.
Oh snap this has to be the same dog that Dr. Storm saw. So we buy
this guy and girl a round of drinks and we're talking to these people
and it turns out it's this guy John is blind and his seeing eye dog is
Rasha. So he's asking us why we're here and what we're trying to do
at the lab and I explain we're trying to make little stars inside of
these little carbon soccer balls and I've been trying to do this
experiment for like 11 years now. And that since the laser is broken
and might not get fixed I can just take the existing experimental data
and fly home tomorrow morning or stay and see if we can get the parts
for the laser and get the 3rd day of testing in and also look at the
results from the first two runs that have to be processed by the
chemistry department.
John says wow it's amazing what you're doing and you must stay and
follow it through. And I'm like yeah you're probably right. So now I
have to move my return flight out to Thursday. And he's like here's
my number call me tomorrow and we'll have a beer.
The guys name is John Wimmer and he's blind and climbed Mount Hood
with his dog Rasha and his friend Diego Gonzalez Joven.
This trip has been really amazing and surreal. The people here are
friendly and awesome. It's hot. There are a lot of artists trying to
make something good and original. It's good to try to do things that
most people would just consider impossible.
(Forgive the typos I usually don't post this personal stuff and I'm
exhausted and inebriated.)
Posted via email from Edward's posterous
