Recent Fusion Experiment Warrants Delving Into

One must look at the recent fusion experiment in view of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; it says essentially that you can’t create new energy from used energy, or out of nothing. Some even declared this recent exploration into fusion (December, 2022) as a "breakthrough."

Here, we have two old energy sources of Hydrogen atoms and by combining the two, new energy levels are created purportedly exceeded those original two atoms — and then some.

Significant questions arise:

• Is the laser energy the only input?
• How about the electricity used?
• What about the energy used for cooling?

A fusion attempt was made at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Used were 192 lasers whose concentric beams produced a temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius.

While it lasted for only one trillions of a second the fusion was considered a success.

The scientists observed that the process is still very inefficient, since only about 10 % extra energy over and above the energy that was supposedly equal to the energy used to fire the lasers, was measured. It seems that the laws of physics were not violated.

The amount of extra energy recovered was very small, about 0.01 KW.

While this is small, one must consider that within one liter of water, there are 6.6 x 10²² hydrogen atoms. So the potential is great.

Here is a short lesson on atomic physics. The fusion starts with two Hydrogen (H2) atoms.

Each consists of one electron, one proton, and two neutrons.

After fusion, we have a new element called Helium (He).

These are new atoms which absorbed the two electrons and the two protons from the two hydrogen atoms.

However, the Helium atom accepted only two of the four neutrons.

These two neutrons per atom constitute the energy claimed to cover the laser energy input.

This type of fusion energy has no practical use. It's only transitory.

The way this recovered fusion energy is measured, is, to count the number of escaped neutrons, and then multiply their mass ( weight divide by gravity)by the speed of light squared.

Now, let’s look at the granddad of all nuclear fusion, the sun.

The sun has converted Hydrogen into Helium for millions of years and spits out excess neutrons which, together with photons, created intense cosmic radiation to keep our earth warm and lit.

Thus, the sun follows the second law by converting high energy (fusion) into a lower form of energy (cosmic radiation).

Eventually, and according to our Second Law of Thermodynamics, the sun will run out of hydrogen atoms. At that time, the sun will become a dead star.

But, don’t worry — that will take another 5.5 billion years to happen.

During my lifetime, I have seen a few other claims of successful fusion experiments, nothing ever came of it.

(References for this article include The Washington Post, of Dec. 12, 2022.)

(Editor's note: Related stories may be found here. And also here.)

Dr. Hans Baumann, a former Corporate Vice President and founder of his company, is a well known inventor, economist, and author having published books on scientific, economic, and historical subjects. Read Dr. Hans Baumann's Reports — More Here.