First, the researchers have a high degree of credential credibility. [...] These are very much not software engineers who think they’ve solved alchemy after talking with ChatGPT for a year or something.
[...]
Optimistically, in my mind this leaves about 10% odds that fusion energy becomes commercialized or at least piloted over the next couple decades and Marathon Fusion’s approach for the alchemical production of gold becomes a meaningful consideration for these fusion plants! That’s pretty high, and implies a high value for continuing to research this technology, even if not necessarily for Marathon Fusion specifically. Manifold [a predicti
First, the researchers have a high degree of credential credibility. [...] These are very much not software engineers who think they’ve solved alchemy after talking with ChatGPT for a year or something.
[...]
Optimistically, in my mind this leaves about 10% odds that fusion energy becomes commercialized or at least piloted over the next couple decades and Marathon Fusion’s approach for the alchemical production of gold becomes a meaningful consideration for these fusion plants! That’s pretty high, and implies a high value for continuing to research this technology, even if not necessarily for Marathon Fusion specifically. Manifold [a prediction market] traders are giving this proposition ("Artificially produced gold on a significant scale by 2035?") ~20% odds, which likely reflects the discount rate on a market that only resolves in 10 years, although it also leaves room for other potential methodologies for gold production (presumably also through fusion energy but who knows).
Yeah, I don't think "asking people what will happen" is a reliable way to measure pretty much anything, let alone the future, so being more accurate than that is whatever. Additionally, I tried to find where the substack got his numbers for these chances from, and it seems like the answer is out of his ass? So that isn't very credible either in my opinion.
I wouldnt believe shit until they’ve answered the stability behind these reactions. Like the Lead article where they transformed lead into another element maybe Gold…? Ok but now you would have an unstable isotope of gold that would decay.
Edit: I read the article and it’s stable in theory.
Homie, Au-197 is what's being created, as stated in the screenshot, and it is the stable isotope of gold. It's the naturally occurring one.
And the reaction doesn't need to be especially stable on its own when it is a bonus byproduct of existing fusion reactor processes. The point is that we can take existing and new reactors, add this process, and immediately gain significantly extra value from the stuff we're already doing.
it's like hybrid electric cars that charge their batteries using the brakes. You're already braking and losing a ton of energy as waste. ANY way to recapture and use that waste energy that yields more value than the materials required to capture it, is an immediate win.
I'd really love to travel back in time and first amaze an alchemist that their future colleagues will be able to turn lead into gold. Only to crush them again by explaining that the process is too expensive.
I mean I guess the concept there though is, isn't making things into gold pointless anyway. We can lab make diamonds too, the jewelry industry works to keep them as a distinct alternate product to protect their slave mined ones. Is the quantity used for electronics enough that it would make a difference in typical manufacturing?
Actually kind of the ironic thing to me based on the time. Did gold have a practical use in the days of alchemy? I mean obviously mass producing gold, basically would have made it completely useless back then, it could make a small group of people very rich, provided they kept the method secret and were careful about how much they sold. It seems like the whole idea was flawed on it's head even if they hadn't based it on completely incorrect basis of the world.
The jewelry and investment industries make up 45-50% of gold consumption. Practical and industrial uses make up only 5-10%.
As such, while flooding the market with cheap gold would rapidly lower value, that's unlikely to be how the gold is sold. If the amount of gold being generated from fusion reactors is orders of magnitude less than the global consumption rate from jewelry and investment, which seems likely, and they are selling at our near market value rather than trying to undercut everyone, then the value of the generated gold would remain relatively stable.
in other words, considering that the gold market generates something like $350bn USD per year, and the total market value of "above ground" gold around $25tn USD, even if fusion reactors generate $1bn USD worth of gold it would have a negligible impact on the price of gold while providing significant value to the reactor operators (incentivizing the growth of the fusion reactor industry)
Alchemists (correctly) observed that everything in the world was subject to disorder and decay as time progressed, but noted that gold seemed to be immune to this effect (since it is highly resistant to oxidation). Add into that the belief system that they were working with:
That everything in the world exists on a chain of being from the most corrupt at the bottom to the most noble on top (with god being most high).
That everything is really the same thing, and through physical processes changes its form, including up and down the chain.
And they belived that if they could figure out how to transmute a lesser metal into a more noble one then they could probably move other things up the chain of being as well. Which is why the Philospher's Stone was supposed to make people unaging and immortal, and cure all disease, in addition to transmuting lesser metals into gold. Alchemists like John of Rupescissa probably belived that creating the Stone would also bring the world closer to the divine in some way, and it was god's wish for mortals to do this.
The tritium intermix was an adjustable feature in the warp core reactors of Klingon starships in the late 24th century. Federation and Romulan starships in the same era were not designed with this feature.
“If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, “we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . .” “Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. “Fiscal policy!" The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied. “Fiscal policy. . .” he repeated, “that is what I said.” “How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.” “If you would allow me to continue.. .” Ford nodded dejectedly. “Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.” Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed. “But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availabili
... Show more...
“If," ["the management consultant"] said tersely, “we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy. . .” “Fiscal policy!" whooped Ford Prefect. “Fiscal policy!" The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied. “Fiscal policy. . .” he repeated, “that is what I said.” “How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn't grow on trees you know.” “If you would allow me to continue.. .” Ford nodded dejectedly. “Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.” Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed. “But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut." Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down. “So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances." The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Infinite gold would be useful for electronics, but it would destroy gold's utility as a long-term store of value. So the wealth for shareholders would be finite, taken from today's gold holders.
I don't know, if you gather one proton's and two neutrons worth of energy, localized entirely within the supposed space of an atom, you could generate mass from energy. However, what that energy converts into, is entirely random, so I would guess most of the time you just get realllly high energy photons out of it.
You have seen the equations? 99% you don't get anything useful or somehow split the fucking universe, so that time-reversed flow of information won't break the causality. (And it fucking does break the universe, the local bubble we are in. Please, don't google false-vacuum.) We don't even know the speed of light in one-direction, because information travels at the fucking speed of light, whatever that is. Yet, you measure a spin of electron, and the other fucker in the opposite side of the universe, is known to be opposite in the instant.
The action is minimized by nature, in one way or other, even if this means punching a hole in the space-time continuum, to start a tree-of-universes descending from the host.
It's the same outcome either way if that research/tech is owned privately. Energy is probably worth more than gold TBH. Gold is almost useless, energy on the other hand is needed for everything.
My first thought was “what happens to all that gold under neutron irradiation?” Apparently it transmutes back to Mercury 198 with beta decay, which is the wrong isotope. But if Mercury 198 gets hit again… I think it turns into 199, which is also stable?
A lot of papers for these reactions are behind stupid subscription paywalls 🙁
Still though, it does seem extremely fortuitous, and it’s possible the gold doesn’t become impossibly radioactive. Maybe there’s some other chain that will cause problems, but the immediate concern in the bulk materials seems… alright.
uhm... if gold198 turns back into mercury in 64 hours, and is radioactive in the meantime.... that sucks. But what they are doing is turning Mercury198 into mercury197, and that decays into (real) gold197 .... afaiu.
Another thing fusion reactors would be good for is “burning” high radioactivity fission waste.
…Keeping such waste in a hole isn’t that expensive, so maybe the economic viability is questionable, but still. Fusion is great sources of very high temperature neutrons for anything that needs it.
That being said, I’m skeptical of all the other stuff needed to make it practical. Like, say, the extreme neutron flux making all that incredible expensive containment equipment radioactive.
I looked and I couldn't find a use of the term "Ölchemie", however I am pretty sure that for all other oils, there were never enough chemical processes to have a need in finding a name for a branch of the chemical industry, as for "Petrochemie". But yes, per the Etymologie link that I looked at, "Petrochemie" comes from greek "petros" for rock, and "ol" for oil - technically (and the article mentioned the same) it should be "Petrolchemie" which makes it closer to the "Alchemy" joke the previous commenter was making 😀
I feel like this is one of those things governments might get paranoid about because their treasuries are based on a high (constantly increasing increasing due to limited amount) value of gold. Imagine one country figuring out how to produce gold and then every other treasury starts losing it's value.
Wasn't the plan to use the neutrons generated by D-T fusion to generate more tritium because it is very rare on Earth? Didn't they even not have enough neutrons to generate enough tritium for self sustaining fueling of fusion that the current plan is to use a beryllium blanket to multiply the neutron flux? Where would the extra neutrons for gold transmutation even come from? Waste from the tritium breeding?
Monte Carlo transport calculations show that neutrons produced in a tokamak power plant can convert the abundant isotope 198Hg to stable 197Au via the (n,2n) channel, yielding several tonnes of gold per plant-year without compromising the tritium breeding ratio.
Shit like this is what makes me question if this is our first run around or if we are looping a creation/destruction loop.
Ancient astronauts.
Younger dryas.
Unified flood myths.
Objects out of place in the larger historical context.
No historical records past cave paintings.
I'm just a bit of a nutter on this. Maybe alchemy was us trying to re-enact what our more advanced ancestors could do before something reset us. Maybe we were so advanced everything was digital and that's why there's no records. Books break down. Digital media breaks down. Know what doesn't? Stone. But you can only do so much to tell people thousands of years from now. So you do what you can do. Oral storytelling, but then languages get lost and evolve but things persist.
It's a neat idea for sure, but the out of place artifacts are rarely/never as mysterious as people like Graham Hancock would suggest.
Younger Dryas wasn't as catastrophic either. Nor are flood myths as unified.
It's fun to imagine possibilities like that but I can't conceive of how a society could advance to a nonphysical/digital technology paradigm without impacting the earth in enormously detectable ways.
I think it's interesting to imagine a scenario like what if European explorers shipwrecked on a place like Rapa Nui, the most isolated inhabitable place on the planet. How many generations could they maintain knowledge of the globe, and their culture.
Obviously the Polynesians basically maintained their language (ie it was identifiable as a polynesian dialect) for ~500+ years in plausibly total isolation.
Helion got really quiet since that last venture push 😀
I've seen a few pretty solid questions about the lack of shielding around their running equipment being a red flag that their output is nowhere near what they claimed.
arxiv.org: a pre-print source, this is not peer-reviewed yet. So, until other papers refer to this paper, it has low significance in the literature. The paper has references to other papers and to previous corpus of knowledge on the subject, which is good. However, this paper is based on simulations only.
Crucially, the scheme identified here does not negatively impact electricity production, and is also compatible with the challenging tritium breeding requirements of fusion power plant design because (n, 2n) reactions of 198Hg drive both transmutation and neutron multiplication
Monte Carlo transport calculations show that neutrons produced in a tokamak power plant can convert the abundant isotope 198Hg to stable 197Au via the (n,2n) channel, yielding several tonnes of gold per plant-year without compromising the tritium breeding ratio.
The decommissioned blanket material would increase in value, and the Mercury-198 in the blanket doesn't ma
... Show more...
arxiv.org: a pre-print source, this is not peer-reviewed yet. So, until other papers refer to this paper, it has low significance in the literature. The paper has references to other papers and to previous corpus of knowledge on the subject, which is good. However, this paper is based on simulations only.
Crucially, the scheme identified here does not negatively impact electricity production, and is also compatible with the challenging tritium breeding requirements of fusion power plant design because (n, 2n) reactions of 198Hg drive both transmutation and neutron multiplication
Monte Carlo transport calculations show that neutrons produced in a tokamak power plant can convert the abundant isotope 198Hg to stable 197Au via the (n,2n) channel, yielding several tonnes of gold per plant-year without compromising the tritium breeding ratio.
The decommissioned blanket material would increase in value, and the Mercury-198 in the blanket doesn't majorly impact its effectiveness in transmuting lithium to tritium.
The "worst" gold isotope half-life is less than a year, so only a modest cool-down is needed for the output:
197Au to be Class 7 when activity concentration is > 2700 pCi/g, which is reached after 13.7 years for the initial concentration listed.
An even more stringent constraint can be applied for any gold that will be regularly handled by the general population. As a highly conservative requirement, we can stipulate that this gold must be less radioactive than a banana. Due to 40K content, bananas have an activity of ∼ 3520 pCi/kg, or about 420 pCi for a single banana. To meet this requirement, a troy ounce of gold with the initial isotope mix shown in Table 2 must sit for about 17.7 years to be below a banana equivalent level of activity.
What strikes me here with this paper is the suggested liquid blanket, so this would be a kin of D-T Fusion MSR. We now have two proposed technologies behind being able handle hot radioactive liquids.
It also helps that we're talking about rather dense nuclei too. So it's not just a neutron absorbing blanket, but a rather high-performing one at that. Which you need to convert fusion outputs to heat and power anyway. And gold is soluble in mercury anyway, so extraction is already a known (albeit incredibly dangerous) process. Win-win.
yielding several tonnes of gold per plant-year
Mother of god that's a lot to magic-up outta nowhere. At first I thought this would disrupt the market, but it looks like yearly global gold production is around 3000 tons a year. So it would take a lot of reactors to impact the gold market, so... yeah. Reactors really could start paying for themselves.
The safe level isn't that important, because the gold can be put into an ETF investment vehicle, which is a substantial enough demand for gold. National reserves (the vast majority of gold demand) too are long term holders.
2t/GWhth is a huge amount. While the best case economics for fusion is 30c/kwh cost = $3m/Gwhe, that would be 3GWhth = 6T of gold. Even at $45/oz (1/100th of current value) that would be $8m/Gwhe revenue, and would likely be able to sell electricity at market rates as the "waste product", or not even bother with the expense/complexity of electricity generation.
Look at the gold price for the last 10 years, it's steadily rising. We keep producing more electronics that need gold. At the same time some gold is lost because not in all tech it can be easily recycled. On top of that gold mining is becoming more expensive because a lot of easily accessible gold has been mined out.
So even if this technology could create additional gold in the future it probably won't out scale the growing demand.
Tbf gold demand is artifical, total mined gold by humanity is approx 27m³, used in electronics is 1m³, rest is jewelry and storage. Value of gold essentially boils down to "it has value and is pretty"
global mine production is 10t per day. 120t/day from single 1gw e plant does sink value substantially, but is a drop in the bucket compared to 80k tons of copper/day. Gold is a better copper I think, so maybe a floor value of $20/kg. But to subsidize fusion energy by 20c/kwh, it needs to stay above $11/oz . Gold is also a better silver, but silver production is 80t/day, and so gold is unlikely to hold that threshhold value.
A bigger deal is that we are collectively too politically stupid to have "golden goose fusion". Our blessed oligarchs deserve better than their heathen oligarchs, and it is perfectly normal to diminish and warcruise them. Nuclear power already isn't war resilient, and destroying one is something Ukraine has seen propaganda value in doing due to media control that would blame Russia for it. So, our collective stupidity is already at extreme levels. But the play in golden goose fusion is buy all the ultra cheap gold after mine closures, and then destroy all the golden geese. Destroy all attempts to build new ones.
I'm not really familiar with the proposed scale of fusion plants, but how do you get to 120t/day? The paper says the theoretical gold output is 2t/GWth/year.
Demon I think comes from the Latin meaning "Show" and "money" also comes from "demonstra" to "show or represent value,from in terms of the hellish entity comes from "Demonic spirits" as in "the ones who show themselves, as opposed to the spirits that don't show themselves. "Monster" comes from monstra, which is from demonstra, a monster is a specific spirit that shows itself.
HenriVolney
in reply to fossilesque • • •Arthur Besse
in reply to fossilesque • • •marathonfusion.com/alchemy.pdf
thebsdetector.substack.com/p/g…
::: spoiler tldr from that blog's assessment:
... Show more...[...]
marathonfusion.com/alchemy.pdf
thebsdetector.substack.com/p/g…
::: spoiler tldr from that blog's assessment:
[...]
[...]
Government-Funded Alchemy
Ben (The BS Detector)Jack Riddle[Any/All]
in reply to Arthur Besse • • •like this
Arthur Besse likes this.
Ludrol
in reply to Jack Riddle[Any/All] • • •Platform calibration
ManifoldJack Riddle[Any/All]
in reply to Ludrol • • •MinnesotaGoddam
in reply to Jack Riddle[Any/All] • • •DeathsEmbrace
in reply to fossilesque • • •I wouldnt believe shit until they’ve answered the stability behind these reactions. Like the Lead article where they transformed lead into another element maybe Gold…? Ok but now you would have an unstable isotope of gold that would decay.
Edit: I read the article and it’s stable in theory.
Rentlar
in reply to DeathsEmbrace • • •🇦🇺𝕄𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕕𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕔𝕠𝕕𝕚𝕝𝕖
in reply to DeathsEmbrace • • •neatchee
in reply to DeathsEmbrace • • •Homie, Au-197 is what's being created, as stated in the screenshot, and it is the stable isotope of gold. It's the naturally occurring one.
And the reaction doesn't need to be especially stable on its own when it is a bonus byproduct of existing fusion reactor processes. The point is that we can take existing and new reactors, add this process, and immediately gain significantly extra value from the stuff we're already doing.
it's like hybrid electric cars that charge their batteries using the brakes. You're already braking and losing a ton of energy as waste. ANY way to recapture and use that waste energy that yields more value than the materials required to capture it, is an immediate win.
Gyroplast
in reply to fossilesque • • •Here's a link to the paper, HTH, HAND.
This is entirely over my head, unfortunately, but massively amusing!
like this
Arthur Besse likes this.
FundMECFS
in reply to Gyroplast • • •Björn
in reply to fossilesque • • •TheFogan
in reply to Björn • • •I mean I guess the concept there though is, isn't making things into gold pointless anyway. We can lab make diamonds too, the jewelry industry works to keep them as a distinct alternate product to protect their slave mined ones. Is the quantity used for electronics enough that it would make a difference in typical manufacturing?
Actually kind of the ironic thing to me based on the time. Did gold have a practical use in the days of alchemy? I mean obviously mass producing gold, basically would have made it completely useless back then, it could make a small group of people very rich, provided they kept the method secret and were careful about how much they sold. It seems like the whole idea was flawed on it's head even if they hadn't based it on completely incorrect basis of the world.
like this
Björn likes this.
neatchee
in reply to TheFogan • • •The jewelry and investment industries make up 45-50% of gold consumption. Practical and industrial uses make up only 5-10%.
As such, while flooding the market with cheap gold would rapidly lower value, that's unlikely to be how the gold is sold. If the amount of gold being generated from fusion reactors is orders of magnitude less than the global consumption rate from jewelry and investment, which seems likely, and they are selling at our near market value rather than trying to undercut everyone, then the value of the generated gold would remain relatively stable.
in other words, considering that the gold market generates something like $350bn USD per year, and the total market value of "above ground" gold around $25tn USD, even if fusion reactors generate $1bn USD worth of gold it would have a negligible impact on the price of gold while providing significant value to the reactor operators (incentivizing the growth of the fusion reactor industry)
drosophila
in reply to TheFogan • • •Alchemists (correctly) observed that everything in the world was subject to disorder and decay as time progressed, but noted that gold seemed to be immune to this effect (since it is highly resistant to oxidation). Add into that the belief system that they were working with:
And they belived that if they could figure out how to transmute a lesser metal into a more noble one then they could probably move other things up the chain of being as well. Which is why the Philospher's Stone was supposed to make people unaging and immortal, and cure all disease, in addition to transmuting lesser metals into gold. Alchemists like John of Rupescissa probably belived that creating the Stone would also bring the world closer to the divine in some way, and it was god's wish for mortals to do this.
Skullgrid
in reply to fossilesque • • •like this
Arthur Besse likes this.
Arthur Besse
in reply to Skullgrid • • •* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/A…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/D…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/T…
* memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/T…
:::
Tritium intermix
Contributors to Memory Alpha (Memory Alpha)Silic0n_Alph4
in reply to fossilesque • • •Infinite energy for all is cancelled.
Infinite wealth for the shareholders will go ahead instead.
N0t_5ure
in reply to Silic0n_Alph4 • • •― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
gandalf_der_12te
in reply to N0t_5ure • • •explodicle
in reply to Silic0n_Alph4 • • •WolfLink
in reply to explodicle • • •ulterno
in reply to WolfLink • • •MinnesotaGoddam
in reply to explodicle • • •explodicle
in reply to MinnesotaGoddam • • •I'm no physicist, but it seems like once transmutation is a thing, it won't stop here.
It would be like a quantum computer breaking Bitcoin and so we fall back on Ethereum.
MinnesotaGoddam
in reply to explodicle • • •JATth
in reply to MinnesotaGoddam • • •MinnesotaGoddam
in reply to JATth • • •JATth
in reply to MinnesotaGoddam • • •You have seen the equations? 99% you don't get anything useful or somehow split the fucking universe, so that time-reversed flow of information won't break the causality. (And it fucking does break the universe, the local bubble we are in. Please, don't google false-vacuum.) We don't even know the speed of light in one-direction, because information travels at the fucking speed of light, whatever that is. Yet, you measure a spin of electron, and the other fucker in the opposite side of the universe, is known to be opposite in the instant.
The action is minimized by nature, in one way or other, even if this means punching a hole in the space-time continuum, to start a tree-of-universes descending from the host.
/s (I had enough beer for today.)
MinnesotaGoddam
in reply to JATth • • •falseWhite
in reply to Silic0n_Alph4 • • •brucethemoose
in reply to fossilesque • • •My first thought was “what happens to all that gold under neutron irradiation?” Apparently it transmutes back to Mercury 198 with beta decay, which is the wrong isotope. But if Mercury 198 gets hit again… I think it turns into 199, which is also stable?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold-198
A lot of papers for these reactions are behind stupid subscription paywalls 🙁
Still though, it does seem extremely fortuitous, and it’s possible the gold doesn’t become impossibly radioactive. Maybe there’s some other chain that will cause problems, but the immediate concern in the bulk materials seems… alright.
Gold-198 - Wikipedia
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Zeusz13
in reply to brucethemoose • • •humanspiral
in reply to brucethemoose • • •brucethemoose
in reply to fossilesque • • •Another thing fusion reactors would be good for is “burning” high radioactivity fission waste.
…Keeping such waste in a hole isn’t that expensive, so maybe the economic viability is questionable, but still. Fusion is great sources of very high temperature neutrons for anything that needs it.
That being said, I’m skeptical of all the other stuff needed to make it practical. Like, say, the extreme neutron flux making all that incredible expensive containment equipment radioactive.
gandalf_der_12te
in reply to fossilesque • • •raspberriesareyummy
in reply to gandalf_der_12te • • •Cort
in reply to raspberriesareyummy • • •raspberriesareyummy
in reply to Cort • • •space_comrade [he/him]
in reply to fossilesque • • •REDACTED
in reply to fossilesque • • •tetris11
in reply to REDACTED • • •lemmy_get_my_coat
in reply to tetris11 • • •tetris11
in reply to lemmy_get_my_coat • • •I_am_10_squirrels
in reply to tetris11 • • •tetris11
in reply to I_am_10_squirrels • • •mitchty
in reply to tetris11 • • •Gil Wanderley
in reply to fossilesque • • •A7thStone
in reply to Gil Wanderley • • •It looks that way.
Gil Wanderley
in reply to A7thStone • • •whoisearth
in reply to fossilesque • • •Shit like this is what makes me question if this is our first run around or if we are looping a creation/destruction loop.
Ancient astronauts.
Younger dryas.
Unified flood myths.
Objects out of place in the larger historical context.
No historical records past cave paintings.
I'm just a bit of a nutter on this. Maybe alchemy was us trying to re-enact what our more advanced ancestors could do before something reset us. Maybe we were so advanced everything was digital and that's why there's no records. Books break down. Digital media breaks down. Know what doesn't? Stone. But you can only do so much to tell people thousands of years from now. So you do what you can do. Oral storytelling, but then languages get lost and evolve but things persist.
It's a great concept for fantasy or sci Fi.
Anyways I digress.
Rooster326
in reply to whoisearth • • •m0darn
in reply to whoisearth • • •It's a neat idea for sure, but the out of place artifacts are rarely/never as mysterious as people like Graham Hancock would suggest.
Younger Dryas wasn't as catastrophic either. Nor are flood myths as unified.
It's fun to imagine possibilities like that but I can't conceive of how a society could advance to a nonphysical/digital technology paradigm without impacting the earth in enormously detectable ways.
I think it's interesting to imagine a scenario like what if European explorers shipwrecked on a place like Rapa Nui, the most isolated inhabitable place on the planet. How many generations could they maintain knowledge of the globe, and their culture.
Obviously the Polynesians basically maintained their language (ie it was identifiable as a polynesian dialect) for ~500+ years in plausibly total isolation.
general_kitten
in reply to fossilesque • • •Lemminary
in reply to general_kitten • • •DragonTypeWyvern
in reply to Lemminary • • •Only if you think magic is anything you don't understand
That sounds harsh but I don't mean it that way, I just find that quote annoying
42beansinapod
in reply to fossilesque • • •Stern
in reply to 42beansinapod • • •mnemonicmonkeys
in reply to 42beansinapod • • •rumba
in reply to mnemonicmonkeys • • •Helion got really quiet since that last venture push 😀
I've seen a few pretty solid questions about the lack of shielding around their running equipment being a red flag that their output is nowhere near what they claimed.
RubberElectrons
in reply to rumba • • •mindbleach
in reply to 42beansinapod • • •Can we not spam neutrons at hydrogen?
There's a lot of hydrogen.
Atropos
in reply to 42beansinapod • • •No, silly, we'll make infinite gold and use that to purchase infinite helium.
Foolproof!
🔍🦘🛎
in reply to fossilesque • • •JATth
in reply to fossilesque • • •arxiv.org: a pre-print source, this is not peer-reviewed yet. So, until other papers refer to this paper, it has low significance in the literature. The paper has references to other papers and to previous corpus of knowledge on the subject, which is good. However, this paper is based on simulations only.
... Show more...The decommissioned blanket material would increase in value, and the Mercury-198 in the blanket doesn't ma
arxiv.org: a pre-print source, this is not peer-reviewed yet. So, until other papers refer to this paper, it has low significance in the literature. The paper has references to other papers and to previous corpus of knowledge on the subject, which is good. However, this paper is based on simulations only.
The decommissioned blanket material would increase in value, and the Mercury-198 in the blanket doesn't majorly impact its effectiveness in transmuting lithium to tritium.
The "worst" gold isotope half-life is less than a year, so only a modest cool-down is needed for the output:
What strikes me here with this paper is the suggested liquid blanket, so this would be a kin of D-T Fusion MSR. We now have two proposed technologies behind being able handle hot radioactive liquids.
Goodtoknow
in reply to JATth • • •Banana for scale!
dejected_warp_core
in reply to JATth • • •It also helps that we're talking about rather dense nuclei too. So it's not just a neutron absorbing blanket, but a rather high-performing one at that. Which you need to convert fusion outputs to heat and power anyway. And gold is soluble in mercury anyway, so extraction is already a known (albeit incredibly dangerous) process. Win-win.
Mother of god that's a lot to magic-up outta nowhere. At first I thought this would disrupt the market, but it looks like yearly global gold production is around 3000 tons a year. So it would take a lot of reactors to impact the gold market, so... yeah. Reactors really could start paying for themselves.
ulterno
in reply to dejected_warp_core • • •Yeah, that should help them with their capital, storage costs and Hg procurement costs.
Now back to the energy generation...
some_kind_of_guy
in reply to JATth • • •humanspiral
in reply to JATth • • •The safe level isn't that important, because the gold can be put into an ETF investment vehicle, which is a substantial enough demand for gold. National reserves (the vast majority of gold demand) too are long term holders.
2t/GWhth is a huge amount. While the best case economics for fusion is 30c/kwh cost = $3m/Gwhe, that would be 3GWhth = 6T of gold. Even at $45/oz (1/100th of current value) that would be $8m/Gwhe revenue, and would likely be able to sell electricity at market rates as the "waste product", or not even bother with the expense/complexity of electricity generation.
Gumus
in reply to humanspiral • • •Pyr
in reply to Gumus • • •5190tent
in reply to Gumus • • •Look at the gold price for the last 10 years, it's steadily rising. We keep producing more electronics that need gold. At the same time some gold is lost because not in all tech it can be easily recycled. On top of that gold mining is becoming more expensive because a lot of easily accessible gold has been mined out.
So even if this technology could create additional gold in the future it probably won't out scale the growing demand.
AlmightyDoorman
in reply to 5190tent • • •humanspiral
in reply to Gumus • • •global mine production is 10t per day. 120t/day from single 1gw e plant does sink value substantially, but is a drop in the bucket compared to 80k tons of copper/day. Gold is a better copper I think, so maybe a floor value of $20/kg. But to subsidize fusion energy by 20c/kwh, it needs to stay above $11/oz . Gold is also a better silver, but silver production is 80t/day, and so gold is unlikely to hold that threshhold value.
A bigger deal is that we are collectively too politically stupid to have "golden goose fusion". Our blessed oligarchs deserve better than their heathen oligarchs, and it is perfectly normal to diminish and warcruise them. Nuclear power already isn't war resilient, and destroying one is something Ukraine has seen propaganda value in doing due to media control that would blame Russia for it. So, our collective stupidity is already at extreme levels. But the play in golden goose fusion is buy all the ultra cheap gold after mine closures, and then destroy all the golden geese. Destroy all attempts to build new ones.
Eranziel
in reply to humanspiral • • •humanspiral
in reply to Eranziel • • •_stranger_
in reply to fossilesque • • •Tja
in reply to _stranger_ • • •Quadhammer
in reply to Tja • • •SomeRandomNoob
in reply to _stranger_ • • •tigeruppercut
in reply to fossilesque • • •ha
DylanMc6 [any, any]
in reply to tigeruppercut • • •Agent641
in reply to DylanMc6 [any, any] • • •Dippy
in reply to DylanMc6 [any, any] • • •mindbleach
in reply to fossilesque • • •𝓹𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓬𝓮𝓼𝓼
in reply to fossilesque • • •SCP-1484 - SCP Foundation
scp-wiki.wikidot.commvirts
in reply to fossilesque • • •