Just a shiny male toy…

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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • In sum, these guys at EAST got the Greenwald limit elevated in their tokamak, which indirectly influences the Lawson criterion: nTTau, density * time at said density * plasma energy released. Lawson is the master finish line for measuring whether a fusion system can actually make more power than it consumes.

    To date, when you cross the Greenwald limit, the man/woman in the operators seat should expect the plasma inside the device to become uncontrollable, hurting the reactor by touching the walls or instruments inside, a so-called “disruption”. Only a few topologies like the stellerator can exceed the limit, and so far, only by 5x.

    But here we have a way to exceed the limit in the much more researched tokamak. This research has positive impact for all but the weirdest/niche fusion devices.









  • 😬 damn, sorry homie. I guess if it’s lifetime warranted, resell the replacements?

    Not particularly relevant, but it’ll help you see through marketing dreck no matter how it evolves: Plasma arcs can go that high in temp, but has no effect on what makes something “hard” or “soft”: interatomic bond strength. I’m certain you know this, but carbon (as in the diamond) holds hands really strongly with other carbon, more strongly than iron to iron as in a steel spatula.

    In theory, an actual diamond surface (not sprayed on, but grown) would be impervious to steel implements. But in reality, making a fully uniform diamond coating is extremely difficult, and thus tear-jerkingly expensive.

    Spraying chunks of diamond onto a surface as the mfgr has done really means there’s a thin sticky coating on the pan before they start, so that these hot pieces of diamond partly melt into it and are “glued”. Safe bet that later is PTFE. That means when your pan is hot on the stove, the layer softens and you wind up eating little bits of diamond with each meal. One day, food sticks, as you’ll have found a spot missing too many diamonds, it’s just the substrate with a bunch of tiny holes to make food stick even worse than a smooth plastic surface.