Making a star on earth. What could possibly go wrong?

[Marie Laveau]

Nordic, I have to tell you, it's been a few days since you started this thread and I still laugh every time I read the title. Very nice.

[Nordic]

I too have a similar problem with the "tampering with God's creation" mindset, and for similar reasons. Still, the idea that we live in a normally balanced natural system — balanced, in part, by natural selection and the evolutionary process — does make me think twice about the hubris of my own species.

Is our hubris part of that "normally balanced natural system" I was speaking of, or is it an aberration? And will that hubris overwhelm the system at a certain point, or will it "naturally select" our species right out of existence, or both? Or mightn't it help create something new entirely?

I think the answers to those questions remain to be seen.

Long ago when I was a devout little Christian I thought the Antichrist would be man-made technology.

We worship it, we crave it, it will let us live like gods, but in the end it's the only thing that will save us from ourselves, etc. etc. And it will ultimately destroy it because we so embraced it.

I mean, there are better ways to boil water.

And let's face it, this kind of megatech is all about maintaining our current lifestyle, NOT adjusting our ways of life to live in balance with the planet and the universe.

[DrEvil]

I too have a similar problem with the "tampering with God's creation" mindset, and for similar reasons. Still, the idea that we live in a normally balanced natural system — balanced, in part, by natural selection and the evolutionary process — does make me think twice about the hubris of my own species.

Is our hubris part of that "normally balanced natural system" I was speaking of, or is it an aberration? And will that hubris overwhelm the system at a certain point, or will it "naturally select" our species right out of existence, or both? Or mightn't it help create something new entirely?

I think the answers to those questions remain to be seen.

Long ago when I was a devout little Christian I thought the Antichrist would be man-made technology.

We worship it, we crave it, it will let us live like gods, but in the end it's the only thing that will save us from ourselves, etc. etc. And it will ultimately destroy it because we so embraced it.

I mean, there are better ways to boil water.

And let's face it, this kind of megatech is all about maintaining our current lifestyle, NOT adjusting our ways of life to live in balance with the planet and the universe.

@Simulist: Judging by our behaviour I'd say we're a cancer. We mutated and gained consciousness and started consuming our host.

And sure, megatech projects like this is intended to perpetuate our exponential growth, but it will also allow us to do so with far less harm to our planet than current tech, and it will enable us (if we can make it small enough) to basically open the entire solar system up for human exploration and settlement (Weeks instead of months to get to mars for instance).
We need technologies that help us slow down the damage we're doing, and at the same time allow us to expand beyond earth permanently.
Or we could do something even more radical, like severe population reduction or going the transhumanist route, but I'm pretty sure both of those are quite unpopular.

Edit: Lame syntax

[Laodicean]

We haven't clue one about anything.

One rat says to the other, "Watch this," and turns the flashlight on above..

...and yells, "BOOGA! BOOGA!"

[Laodicean]

I too have a similar problem with the "tampering with God's creation" mindset, and for similar reasons. Still, the idea that we live in a normally balanced natural system — balanced, in part, by natural selection and the evolutionary process — does make me think twice about the hubris of my own species.

Is our hubris part of that "normally balanced natural system" I was speaking of, or is it an aberration? And will that hubris overwhelm the system at a certain point, or will it "naturally select" our species right out of existence, or both? Or mightn't it help create something new entirely?

I think the answers to those questions remain to be seen.

When Einstein Met Tagore

EINSTEIN: Do you believe in the Divine as isolated from the world?

TAGORE: Not isolated. The infinite personality of Man comprehends the Universe. There cannot be anything that cannot be subsumed by the human personality, and this proves that the Truth of the Universe is human Truth.

I have taken a scientific fact to explain this — Matter is composed of protons and electrons, with gaps between them; but matter may seem to be solid. Similarly humanity is composed of individuals, yet they have their interconnection of human relationship, which gives living unity to man’s world. The entire universe is linked up with us in a similar manner, it is a human universe. I have pursued this thought through art, literature and the religious consciousness of man.

EINSTEIN: There are two different conceptions about the nature of the universe: (1) The world as a unity dependent on humanity. (2) The world as a reality independent of the human factor.

TAGORE: When our universe is in harmony with Man, the eternal, we know it as Truth, we feel it as beauty.

EINSTEIN: This is the purely human conception of the universe.

TAGORE: There can be no other conception. This world is a human world — the scientific view of it is also that of the scientific man. There is some standard of reason and enjoyment which gives it Truth, the standard of the Eternal Man whose experiences are through our experiences.

EINSTEIN: This is a realization of the human entity.

TAGORE: Yes, one eternal entity. We have to realize it through our emotions and activities. We realized the Supreme Man who has no individual limitations through our limitations. Science is concerned with that which is not confined to individuals; it is the impersonal human world of Truths. Religion realizes these Truths and links them up with our deeper needs; our individual consciousness of Truth gains universal significance. Religion applies values to Truth, and we know this Truth as good through our own harmony with it.

EINSTEIN: Truth, then, or Beauty is not independent of Man?

TAGORE: No.

EINSTEIN: If there would be no human beings any more, the Apollo of Belvedere would no longer be beautiful.

TAGORE: No.

EINSTEIN: I agree with regard to this conception of Beauty, but not with regard to Truth.

TAGORE: Why not? Truth is realized through man.

EINSTEIN: I cannot prove that my conception is right, but that is my religion.

TAGORE: Beauty is in the ideal of perfect harmony which is in the Universal Being; Truth the perfect comprehension of the Universal Mind. We individuals approach it through our own mistakes and blunders, through our accumulated experiences, through our illumined consciousness — how, otherwise, can we know Truth?

EINSTEIN: I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man. Anyway, if there is a reality independent of man, there is also a Truth relative to this reality; and in the same way the negation of the first engenders a negation of the existence of the latter.

TAGORE: Truth, which is one with the Universal Being, must essentially be human, otherwise whatever we individuals realize as true can never be called truth – at least the Truth which is described as scientific and which only can be reached through the process of logic, in other words, by an organ of thoughts which is human. According to Indian Philosophy there is Brahman, the absolute Truth, which cannot be conceived by the isolation of the individual mind or described by words but can only be realized by completely merging the individual in its infinity. But such a Truth cannot belong to Science. The nature of Truth which we are discussing is an appearance – that is to say, what appears to be true to the human mind and therefore is human, and may be called maya or illusion.

EINSTEIN: So according to your conception, which may be the Indian conception, it is not the illusion of the individual, but of humanity as a whole.

TAGORE: The species also belongs to a unity, to humanity. Therefore the entire human mind realizes Truth; the Indian or the European mind meet in a common realization.

EINSTEIN: The word species is used in German for all human beings, as a matter of fact, even the apes and the frogs would belong to it.

TAGORE: In science we go through the discipline of eliminating the personal limitations of our individual minds and thus reach that comprehension of Truth which is in the mind of the Universal Man.

EINSTEIN: The problem begins whether Truth is independent of our consciousness.

TAGORE: What we call truth lies in the rational harmony between the subjective and objective aspects of reality, both of which belong to the super-personal man.

EINSTEIN: Even in our everyday life we feel compelled to ascribe a reality independent of man to the objects we use. We do this to connect the experiences of our senses in a reasonable way. For instance, if nobody is in this house, yet that table remains where it is.

TAGORE: Yes, it remains outside the individual mind, but not the universal mind. The table which I perceive is perceptible by the same kind of consciousness which I possess.

EINSTEIN: If nobody would be in the house the table would exist all the same — but this is already illegitimate from your point of view — because we cannot explain what it means that the table is there, independently of us.

Our natural point of view in regard to the existence of truth apart from humanity cannot be explained or proved, but it is a belief which nobody can lack — no primitive beings even. We attribute to Truth a super-human objectivity; it is indispensable for us, this reality which is independent of our existence and our experience and our mind — though we cannot say what it means.

TAGORE: Science has proved that the table as a solid object is an appearance and therefore that which the human mind perceives as a table would not exist if that mind were naught. At the same time it must be admitted that the fact, that the ultimate physical reality is nothing but a multitude of separate revolving centres of electric force, also belongs to the human mind.

In the apprehension of Truth there is an eternal conflict between the universal human mind and the same mind confined in the individual. The perpetual process of reconciliation is being carried on in our science, philosophy, in our ethics. In any case, if there be any Truth absolutely unrelated to humanity then for us it is absolutely non-existing.

It is not difficult to imagine a mind to which the sequence of things happens not in space but only in time like the sequence of notes in music. For such a mind such conception of reality is akin to the musical reality in which Pythagorean geometry can have no meaning. There is the reality of paper, infinitely different from the reality of literature. For the kind of mind possessed by the moth which eats that paper literature is absolutely non-existent, yet for Man’s mind literature has a greater value of Truth than the paper itself. In a similar manner if there be some Truth which has no sensuous or rational relation to the human mind, it will ever remain as nothing so long as we remain human beings.

EINSTEIN: Then I am more religious than you are!

TAGORE: My religion is in the reconciliation of the Super-personal Man, the universal human spirit, in my own individual being.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/ ... et-tagore/

[justdrew]

...
And sure, megatech projects like this is intended to perpetuate our exponential growth, but it will also allow us to do so with far less harm to our planet than current tech, and it will enable us (if we can make it small enough) to basically open the entire solar system up for human exploration and settlement (Weeks instead of months to get to mars for instance).
We need technologies that help us slow down the damage we're doing, and at the same time allow us to expand beyond earth permanently.
...

Dr. Evil is right!

indeed, we've got to colonize at least within the solar system asap. but regardless of that, working fusion power is essential to remaking civilization into a sustainable form. An excess of energy would mean it would be much easier to clean up the messes made, and reconfigure everything else to not make such a mess.

[Hugo Farnsworth]

Maybe wrong, but i think ITER (tokamak design) is a dead end, and the endless PR (read more money) is just that. To me, there are several other fusion designs that look far more promising. There were several Google video (Google internal) presentations that i watched a few years ago that were very interesting.

And while we don't know whether nuclear detonations blasted holes into other dimensions, I think that if that had occurred, Earth would be, to quote Klaatu, "reduced to a burned out cinder." We may have rung one heck of a multi-dimensional bell, however. SETI unleashed, indeed.

[Nordic]

indeed, we've got to colonize at least within the solar system asap. but regardless of that, working fusion power is essential to remaking civilization into a sustainable form. An excess of energy would mean it would be much easier to clean up the messes made, and reconfigure everything else to not make such a mess.

You seriously believe both those things? Or are you joking? I really can't tell.

An excess of energy for our civilization would be like an unlocked and abandoned but fully stocked liquor store to a horde of ravenous alcoholics.

[Hugo Farnsworth]

indeed, we've got to colonize at least within the solar system asap. but regardless of that, working fusion power is essential to remaking civilization into a sustainable form. An excess of energy would mean it would be much easier to clean up the messes made, and reconfigure everything else to not make such a mess.

You seriously believe both those things? Or are you joking? I really can't tell.

An excess of energy for our civilization would be like an unlocked and abandoned but fully stocked liquor store to a horde of ravenous alcoholics.

Yes. No curtailment of population and the energy to strip mine the earth faster. Of course, with that much energy, we could start trashing the solar system, i.e., solar power smelting in orbit (towing asteroids http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/planetary-resources-asteroid-mining), etc. We would have to grow up first, or take the 12 step program.

[Infernal Optimist]

Well, I'm convinced. This making-a-star-on-earth thing is a waste of time. It might produce enough energy, maybe not. And in the process would produce tons of radioactive crap that they don't have an inkling of a thought of a plan for how to dispose of it.

So, a much better idea would be to create a black hole on earth, and harvest energy by feeding mass into it.

To quote Nordic, "What could possibly go wrong?"

[DrEvil]

Black holes would be cool, but probably not a good idea (to put it mildly..). They should stay in Hollywoodland. But fusion - I really don't get why people are so hysterical about it. We understand the process, we've done it a thousand times already, the sun has been doing it for billions of years without opening up any portals to other dimensions or anything.
(So actually - no fusion, no humans).
A fusion reactor also has an off switch, unlike nuclear power plants.
And if we can commercialise them and make them small enough then nuclear waste is not really a problem any longer, because it will be easy to just take it off the planet.
Whether a tokamak design is the best way is up for discussion, but there are plenty of alternatives. See here for a good overview of the latest research :
http://nextbigfuture.com/search/label/fusion
(There's a lot of space propulsion fusion, but the "regular" kind is in there too.)

[justdrew]

the poor situation we find ourselves in regarding spoiling the environment is likely a direct result of a lack of access to clean, cheap energy. Such energy abundance would fundamentally change the potential socio-economic configurations of our societies. Sure Fusion alone isn't the only thing to do, we'll need to make better use of multiple other decentralized energy sources, particularly solar and better storage systems, but fusion is the key to really game changing opportunities. Look into the polywell design I linked above, think... robot (and a few humans) on large spcially built ships, cleaning up the oceans, powered by solar and a small pollywell fusion core, no pollution, just picking up the mess. Those messes will then be easier to break back down into useful material. There's even a real chance we can do aneutronic fusion with a properly built pollywell fusor, which makes things even better.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think with such designs we're even looking at direct energy extraction, no need to boil water.

[BenDhyan]

China turns on nuclear-powered ‘artificial sun’ for first time


The HL-2M tokamak achieved it was first plasma discharge on 4 December 2020(VCG via Getty Images)

China has powered up its nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, in a step forward for technology which would ultimately provide a powerful and limitless source of clean energy.

The HL-2M Tokamak reactor in Chengdu, Sichuan province, is designed to use a powerful magnetic field to fuse hot plasma at temperatures of 150 million celsius – more than 10 times hotter than the sun’s core.

The reactor, referred to as an “artificial sun” because of the enormous heat and power it produces, was completed last year.

Chinese scientists have been working on smaller version of the technology since 2006 in experiments designed to lay the groundwork for future large-scale power generation.

According to state media, the new reactor will also provide technical support to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the world’s largest reactor, which is being constructed in Marseille, France. China is one of six countries, as well as the European Union, participating in the project.

Scientists have been working on nuclear fusion, seen by some as the holy grail of energy production, for decades. The reactors are intended to mimic the physics of stars by merging atomic nuclei, releasing massive amounts of energy which can be controlled and ultimately turned into electricity.

Unlike nuclear fission, the process used in nuclear power plants, it creates little radioactive waste and carries less risk of environmental disaster.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-nuclear-fusion-reactor-artificial-sun-chengdu-b1767393.html