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by poopchute 2782 days ago
Sounds a little reminiscent of General Fusions piston design: http://generalfusion.com/subsystems-fusion-energy-technology...

The essence: A sphere with an array of pistons compresses a central point.

2 comments

That's funny, I had never seen that! It reminds me of a couple of things, water hammers and sonoluminescence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_hammer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence

The important equations are probably under:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_hammer#Slow_valve_closur...

So for high flow velocity and small time delta, the pressure can be pretty astronomical. If you could somehow create a little bubble in the center of the Earth and let it collapse, you might get a little fusion, statistically speaking, before it flattens out to steady state conditions and obviously a low probably of fusion since we aren't standing on a star!

Edit: I realized one other connection here - I think this is what happens when red supergiant stars run out of nuclear fuel and can no longer produce enough heat to hold up their gas against gravity. The gas cools, collapsing into a small volume near the limit of a black hole's density, and under such tremendous pressure, much of the star's mass undergoes fusion simultaneously and releases 10 billions years worth of energy in an instant, blowing the remaining material out into space. That's where the heavy elements in our bodies like iron (and even heavier elements that require added energy to fuse) come from:

http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/bmendez/ay10/2000/cycle/snII.htm...

I really like situations like these... places where you get singularities.. divide by zero situations that break things. It's where really interesting stuff happens that can be unexpected and lead to new ideas and understanding.
Yes, periodic compressions are a feature of both.

I've looked a lot at what they are doing and hope to replicate their story. If I can generate some "marketing neutrons" like they did, maybe funding will follow.