Tokamaks, cold fusion and PPTs
In Rome's Revolution, it was necessary that I have a faster-than-light (FTL) star drive. However, Einstein's theory of special relativity states it is not practical to accelerate mass that fast. According to the theory, it takes more energy than exists in the universe to accelerate any mass to the speed of light, let alone faster.
What I needed was a kinder, gentler FTL drive. To travel at a speed faster than the speed of light, you have to "go around" space rather than through it. We've all read about wormholes. Usually the explanation of how to create a wormhole requires the invocation of a black hole.
This leads me to the topic of a fusion reactor as a generator of electricity. Tokamaks are one type. They use brute force to drive atoms together. The fuel is usually a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen— which is heated to temperatures in excess of 150 million°C, forming a hot plasma. Tokamaks use super strong magnetic fields to keep the plasma away from the walls; these are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma. When the atoms slam against each other, they fuse and if we are very lucky, they generate more power than was required to operate the machine.
[image error]
Keep in mind these are multi-billion dollar machines and we do not as yet have an operational, practical version even though scientists have been working on them since the 1950s.
Contrast this to cold fusion. First reported in 1989, the results and the entire field was scoffed at by scientists and relegated to the sector of science owned by kooks. But over the last few decades, enough evidence has been accumulated (e.g. increase concentration of helium in a closed container, inexplicable pits in palladium rods holding tritium) that scientists have concluded there is a chance the field has merit. So much so that they have renamed the process as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions to keep arms length from the term "cold fusion".
So on the one hand, we have a multi-billion dollar replica of the sun that doesn't even work versus a table-top device that produces the same results at a millionth of the cost.
That's what I wanted for the wormhole of the future. I didn't want to invoke a black hole and the extreme amount of mass and tidal forces associated with such exotic matter. I wanted an easy-to-use, relatively inexpensive way to achieve the same results. Turns out, all you need to do is suck the positive energy out and the resulting negative energy collapses space, paving the way for an FTL drive.
We may not have it today but the Vuduri certainly use it to their advantage in the 35th century.
What I needed was a kinder, gentler FTL drive. To travel at a speed faster than the speed of light, you have to "go around" space rather than through it. We've all read about wormholes. Usually the explanation of how to create a wormhole requires the invocation of a black hole.
This leads me to the topic of a fusion reactor as a generator of electricity. Tokamaks are one type. They use brute force to drive atoms together. The fuel is usually a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen— which is heated to temperatures in excess of 150 million°C, forming a hot plasma. Tokamaks use super strong magnetic fields to keep the plasma away from the walls; these are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma. When the atoms slam against each other, they fuse and if we are very lucky, they generate more power than was required to operate the machine.
[image error]
Keep in mind these are multi-billion dollar machines and we do not as yet have an operational, practical version even though scientists have been working on them since the 1950s.
Contrast this to cold fusion. First reported in 1989, the results and the entire field was scoffed at by scientists and relegated to the sector of science owned by kooks. But over the last few decades, enough evidence has been accumulated (e.g. increase concentration of helium in a closed container, inexplicable pits in palladium rods holding tritium) that scientists have concluded there is a chance the field has merit. So much so that they have renamed the process as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions to keep arms length from the term "cold fusion".
So on the one hand, we have a multi-billion dollar replica of the sun that doesn't even work versus a table-top device that produces the same results at a millionth of the cost.
That's what I wanted for the wormhole of the future. I didn't want to invoke a black hole and the extreme amount of mass and tidal forces associated with such exotic matter. I wanted an easy-to-use, relatively inexpensive way to achieve the same results. Turns out, all you need to do is suck the positive energy out and the resulting negative energy collapses space, paving the way for an FTL drive.
We may not have it today but the Vuduri certainly use it to their advantage in the 35th century.
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Tales of the Vuduri
Tidbits and insights into the 35th century world of the Vuduri.
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