4 ms·

Worth mentioning there are a number of hobbyists/enthusiasts doing this, and there's no reason to be skeptical about the result itself. The link in this post is

Worth mentioning there are a number of hobbyists/enthusiasts doing this, and there's no reason to be skeptical about the result itself. The link in this post is deep in the same site, but http://www.fusor.net/board/index.php http://www.fusor.net/board/index.php is pretty active. This particular achievement is notable because Jackson Oswalt might have been the youngest person to home-build a fusor, or at least the youngest to have spoken up about it. Also worth noting that this is a year old. Looks like he's been plugging at it since then: https://www.foxnews.com/science/teen-builds-working-nuclear-fusion-reactor-in-memphis-home https://www.foxnews.com/science/teen-builds-working-nuclear-...

jcims 8y ago
I worked with a young guy that built one of these in high school. About a year after we parted ways I was just randomly considering how long various things I built would last. Then it occurred to me that the hydrogen atoms that he snapped together and let loose are still likely floating around out there, and could conceivably be in the same configuration a hundred billion years from now.
- tylerhou 8y ago
  Don't feel bad -- it's very possible some of the CO2 that you breathe out every day will still be in the same configuration a hundred billion years from now as well.
  - robotresearcher 8y ago
    If those darn green plants don’t wreck all my hard metabolic work.
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    Nah, CO2 is absorbed by rock weathering and released by vulcanism. There are currently 740 gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere and 1 of those is absorbed every year by rocks. you should expect that most of the molecules he exhales are going to be gone in just a millennium.
    - tylerhou 8y ago
      The average human exhales around 2.3 pounds of CO2 per day [0]. That means that in a lifetime (70 years), a human breathes out around 59,000 pounds of CO2, which is 608,000 moles of CO2 or 3.7 * 10^29 atoms of CO2 [2]. By your gigaton number then there will be on average less than one atom of his CO2 production in 50,000 years [3]. What happens if we consider total carbon footprint instead? Various sources cite around 20 metric tons per year as the average carbon footprint for someone living in the US. That's about 120 times higher than the amount exhaled, and since log(a*b) = log(a) + log(b) we can just add 3540 years [4] to our above calculation ~= 54,000 years. So above a millennium, but much less than a billion years. [0] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/08/are-you-heating-the-planet-when-you-breathe.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/08/are-you-heating-... [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=59000+pounds+%2F+mass+of+carbon+dioxide https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=59000+pounds+%2F+mass+... [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=608,000+moles+to+atoms https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=608,000+moles+to+atoms [3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-log_(739%2F740)(3.6614616%C3%9710%5E29) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-log_(739%2F740)(3.661... [4] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-log_(739%2F740)(120) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-log_(739%2F740)(120)

jcims 8y ago

I worked with a young guy that built one of these in high school. About a year after we parted ways I was just randomly considering how long various things I built would last. Then it occurred to me that the hydrogen atoms that he snapped together and let loose are still likely floating around out there, and could conceivably be in the same configuration a hundred billion years from now.

tylerhou 8y ago
Don't feel bad -- it's very possible some of the CO2 that you breathe out every day will still be in the same configuration a hundred billion years from now as well.
- robotresearcher 8y ago
  If those darn green plants don’t wreck all my hard metabolic work.
- Symmetry 8y ago
  Nah, CO2 is absorbed by rock weathering and released by vulcanism. There are currently 740 gigatons of CO2 in the atmosphere and 1 of those is absorbed every year by rocks. you should expect that most of the molecules he exhales are going to be gone in just a millennium.
  - tylerhou 8y ago
    The average human exhales around 2.3 pounds of CO2 per day [0]. That means that in a lifetime (70 years), a human breathes out around 59,000 pounds of CO2, which is 608,000 moles of CO2 or 3.7 * 10^29 atoms of CO2 [2]. By your gigaton number then there will be on average less than one atom of his CO2 production in 50,000 years [3]. What happens if we consider total carbon footprint instead? Various sources cite around 20 metric tons per year as the average carbon footprint for someone living in the US. That's about 120 times higher than the amount exhaled, and since log(a*b) = log(a) + log(b) we can just add 3540 years [4] to our above calculation ~= 54,000 years. So above a millennium, but much less than a billion years. [0] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/08/are-you-heating-the-planet-when-you-breathe.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/08/are-you-heating-... [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=59000+pounds+%2F+mass+of+carbon+dioxide https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=59000+pounds+%2F+mass+... [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=608,000+moles+to+atoms https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=608,000+moles+to+atoms [3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-log_(739%2F740)(3.6614616%C3%9710%5E29) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-log_(739%2F740)(3.661... [4] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-log_(739%2F740)(120) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=-log_(739%2F740)(120)