Overnight discoveries . . .

[XMan]

Ever considered this? What would be the ramifications if, say, for instance, a room temperature superconducter was discovered tomorrow, and it was a cheap and readily available substance. How would this change technology?

How about fusion? How long would it take until we weren't burning fossil fuels anymore?

 

[DrPizza]

If we discovered a way to make fusion work, cheaply, and with more energy out than in, we'd be done with fossil fuels for electricity as rapidly as we could build fusion plants (I hope). Of course, the red tape, as well as people's attitudes of "fusion is nuk-u-lar, nuk-u-lar is baaad" would probably slow down the building of fusion plants by a lengthy amount of time. I imagine that vehicles would stop using gas within a decade (if it took that long) after the cheap electricity was available.

 

[f95toli]

The main problem with fusion is that it seems to be impossible to agree on where to build the new research reactor (ITER) that is needed in order to make progress.
That has been the main issue for the past few years. I think they have narrowed the choice down to either Japan or France. So maybe in a year or two they will haver decided.

If they had agreed on this say 10-15 years ago we would probable have had a working reactor in 2020 or so.

Room-temperatyre superconductors. It depends on the material, most superconductors are very hard to use even at low temperatures because they are very complicated materials.
It has taken 15 years to learn how to make good cables out of high-temperature superconductors.
The same thing could happen with a room temperature superconductor, itf the material is too complicated it might be difficult to use in applications.

 

[Geniere]

Room temperature superconductors would revolutionize just about everything in our lives. Just for automobiles, it would for eliminate the need for batteries, fuel cells, fossil fuel engines, wheels, brakes, and the total system could be ?recharged? in minutes from the 24,000kva available in most newer homes. The road need be only able to support a vehicle at rest, needing only to have a magnetic permeable properties. The car would simply have a super conducting storage ring feeding a super conducting, electric, linear motor acting against the roadbed. It would certainly make easier the construction of fusion power generation stations. Linear motors to place satellites into orbit, lossless power distribution, laptop batteries, mechanical hearts, levitating mass transport?

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: DrPizza
If we discovered a way to make fusion work, cheaply, and with more energy out than in, we'd be done with fossil fuels for electricity as rapidly as we could build fusion plants (I hope). Of course, the red tape, as well as people's attitudes of "fusion is nuk-u-lar, nuk-u-lar is baaad" would probably slow down the building of fusion plants by a lengthy amount of time. I imagine that vehicles would stop using gas within a decade (if it took that long) after the cheap electricity was available.

Yes, the question is though - how do you generate electricity from a fusion reactor? The current means of boiling water to turn turbines with a fission reactor isn't very efficient - is there a better way?

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: X-Man

Originally posted by: DrPizza
If we discovered a way to make fusion work, cheaply, and with more energy out than in, we'd be done with fossil fuels for electricity as rapidly as we could build fusion plants (I hope). Of course, the red tape, as well as people's attitudes of "fusion is nuk-u-lar, nuk-u-lar is baaad" would probably slow down the building of fusion plants by a lengthy amount of time. I imagine that vehicles would stop using gas within a decade (if it took that long) after the cheap electricity was available.

Yes, the question is though - how do you generate electricity from a fusion reactor? The current means of boiling water to turn turbines with a fission reactor isn't very efficient - is there a better way?

60-70% is about as efficient as you can get from a heat engine.

 

[f95toli]

Geniere: What you are descriging is a flying carpet,not a superconductor.

Superconductors can be used to reduce friction, that is all.
You still need a source of energy in order to be able to accelerate.

Don't forget that we already have experimental MagLev trains that "float" on a superconducting rail. If we had a room temperature superconductor we would not need to cool the rail, but that would be the only difference (and cooling is actually not THAT expersive).

There is also a limit to how much current you can push through a superconductor which means that you can not store an infinite amount of energy in a ring. The critical current is about 10^4-10^5 A/cm^2 at 77 K for the high temperature superconductor (at 4.2K it can be a high as 10^7 A/cm^2).

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: jagec

Originally posted by: X-Man

Originally posted by: DrPizza
If we discovered a way to make fusion work, cheaply, and with more energy out than in, we'd be done with fossil fuels for electricity as rapidly as we could build fusion plants (I hope). Of course, the red tape, as well as people's attitudes of "fusion is nuk-u-lar, nuk-u-lar is baaad" would probably slow down the building of fusion plants by a lengthy amount of time. I imagine that vehicles would stop using gas within a decade (if it took that long) after the cheap electricity was available.

Yes, the question is though - how do you generate electricity from a fusion reactor? The current means of boiling water to turn turbines with a fission reactor isn't very efficient - is there a better way?

60-70% is about as efficient as you can get from a heat engine.

Actually, after doing some research, it IS possible to directly get electricity from a fusion reaction - it's called a magnetohydrodynamic generator. The obvious problem of course is sustaining the fusion reaction.

In the case of superconducters . . . wouldn't the main benefit be for microprocessors? Wouldn't the use of superconducters in the case of, say, a P4, nearly eliminate the heat? IE, the current traveling through the chip encounters resistance in the circuit paths, which it disperses as heat. Simplistic I know, but wouldn't a CPU with lower-resistance circuit paths be able to run much faster, and much cooler?

 

[darkswordsman17]

Widespread superconductors would basically make it so that almost anything that uses electrical circuits would be sped up/made more efficient/made to run cooler. So in say a computer chip it would make it be able to run faster, cooler, and more efficiently (less of the data loss that was talked about with the Prescott and its longer pipeline).

The appeals of fusion is that we could directly harness its energy instead of the secondary nature of fission, and also its amazing amount of released energy. Also it doesn't have the same after effects of fission (there is little to not waste). Another good thing is that it can take the waste from fission and turn it into energy and thus disposing of it at the same time. Very awesome stuff if it could be developed.

The only problem is because the way the world is setup it would take years and years for it to make it to true widespread useage even if there was a major breakthrough. The companies would want to phase out their old products slowly and make huge profits off the initial stage of the newer technology. This sort of stuff would be like a catalyst that set off a nuclear bomb. The advancements made after it would be astounding. We'd start developing flying cars instead of grounded ones. Space would be easily within our boundaries of exploration. The saddest thing about things like this is that it would first be used to make weapons, of unimaginable power...

 

[f95toli]

Superconducting microprocessors have ben around fro some type (>20 years) but only as prototypes. It tiruns out that it is basically pointless to try to use the technology as in Si-microprocessors. Instead a technology known as RSFQ is used.
For the past few years a lot of effor has gone into making superconducting signalprocessors, propotypes at about 60-70 GHz but hopefully this can be extended to about 300 GHz or so.

 

[TGHI]

I prefer my fusion served cold, thank you. If we were to harness the power of cold fusion, then there would be no stray radioactive isotopes released from the reaction - therefore, no nuclear waste with an energy output far greater than that of fission. But - as with any nuclear project, such technology will likely be the pièce de resistance equipped on the latest missles rather than the saviour of the world's energy problems. Just think - tactical nuclear strikes without the worry of fallout.

May be a bleak view, but I actually do think that such technology would benefit more lives than it destroys.

 

[Wahsapa]

with the recent breakthoughs in nanobot technology it seems like the creation of the space elevator is going to come about fairly soon. a space elevator in this case would use cables of nanobots from earth to a space satellite making it much much easier to launch cargo loads into space and much cheaper also making things like a google moon server a reality.

 

[rosonowski]

Well, personally, I think cold fusion adoption would take awhile to come along these days. People are slow to adopt any new technology, simply because it means that they have to get rid of their old technology. Even if it is better, it means restringing all millions of miles of wire, rewiring a couple million homes and the lot. Then, there's, as I think has already been mentioned, NIMBY. People would have to be educated as to the non-danger, but I think there would be some cynicism in regards to that effort. After all, people were told decades ago that nuclear fission reactors were perfectly safe (and in reality, still are in comparison to most technologies)

I think your biggest opposition would come from existing energy companies, though. Fossil feuls are a very limited resource, and the supply and demand curve works in it's favor. With Cold Fusion, it's essentially unlimited (build another plant), so it would only have low, fixed overhead costs.

 

[bobsmith1492]

Cold fusion is a dubious idea, anyway; early attempts were shown up as frauds. I haven't heard of any 'real' research into it, or any ideas as to how it actually works; all I'm saying is don't get your hopes up.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
Cold fusion is a dubious idea, anyway; early attempts were shown up as frauds. I haven't heard of any 'real' research into it, or any ideas as to how it actually works; all I'm saying is don't get your hopes up.

It seems that I read recently that the same group has reported that they've achieved cold fusion, again.... Speaking of which, did the nutcases that claimed to have cloned a human ever provide any evidence to prove their claim?

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: rosonowski
Well, personally, I think cold fusion adoption would take awhile to come along these days. People are slow to adopt any new technology, simply because it means that they have to get rid of their old technology. Even if it is better, it means restringing all millions of miles of wire, rewiring a couple million homes and the lot.

why? It's just electricity...it will run just fine over current transmission systems.

It is true that changing infrastructure to make way for new technology takes time, though. But there's plenty of power transmission infrastructure in place that doesn't really care what kind of powerplant is pumping the electricity in the one side.

I don't think we'll see cold fusion for a while. But fusion might be closer than we think...I'm pretty sure we'll have a few plants up and running in our lifetimes.