» crazy scientific experiments http://www.lokitimes.com Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:30:33 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 The Power of the Sun in the Palm of Our Hands http://www.lokitimes.com/2009/05/06/the-power-of-the-sun-in-the-palm-of-our-hands/ http://www.lokitimes.com/2009/05/06/the-power-of-the-sun-in-the-palm-of-our-hands/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 15:54:02 +0000 The Loki Man http://www.lokitimes.com/?p=602 We could soon harness the power of a sun in a laboratory setting, ala Dr. Octopus’s mad scientist escapades in Spider Man 2.  Or at least that’s what this experiment hopes to prove (report from WIRED.)

The project at the Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility plans to ignite a miniture star in a controlled lab environment using lasers.  This tiny nuclear reactor could produce tremendous amounts of energy.  For example, our sun blasts about 386 BILLION gigawatts of energy into space.  A large nuclear reactor generates 1 gigawatt.  Do the math.  Even if we could create a star hundreds of billions times smaller than our sun, the energy output would still be massive.  This could solve all of our energy problems as long as we can control the nuclear fusion and harness to power of a star.  Worst case scenario = the destruction of earth if the star we build powers out of control.

nif_laserhomeThis building could soon be home to a man-made baby star.

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