By Dr. Jonathan Tennenbaum This article was originally published on Asia Times. In recent years, technological breakthroughs and the growing role of private investors have brought new promise to nuclear fusion – the effort to bring the energy source of the Sun and other stars down to Earth. Launched in 2018, the Fusion Industry Association (FIA) comprises…
Category: Unlocking the atom
The Plasma Universe and Max Planck’s Musical Space-Time Revisited
By Matthew Ehret Near the end of 2019, signals arrived to Earth from the Voyager 2 spacecraft which have shaken the foundations of modern physics, and brought into question what are the forces and principles shaping the space time of stars within galaxies (and implicitly galaxies within clusters of galaxies). The data which NASA scientists…
The Day the World Stood Still: A Story of the First Atomic Bomb and Our Perpetual Cold War
By Cynthia Chung Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and momentWith this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action. – Shakespeare’s Hamlet Act III, scene I [This paper works as a follow-up…
Some Additional Words on Today’s Pythagorean Revival- From Bussard’s Polywell to the Safire Project
By Matthew Ehret In my last report, I introduced two opposing schools of scientific thinking that have been at odds with one another since the days of Plato’s Academy at Athens. One system sits dominant upon the throne of today’s western science wearing the garb of “standard model quantum theory” and “standard model cosmology” and…
Is the Age of Big Bang Cosmology and ‘the Science of Scarcity’ Finally Coming to an End?
By Matthew Ehret It appears increasingly like our world is being shaped by ideas and intentions that have a pseudo-religious like commitment to limits and reducing human activity upon the earth. The concepts of “entropy”, “homeostasis”, “natural equilibrium” and “limits to growth” shape many of the contours of all permitted discussion of ecological, economic and…
The Magic of the Atom
If human activity moves into planetary bodies, the distances are daunting and challenges manifold. What type of energy sources will be needed to support a species capable of making journies to Mars or beyond? What sort of energy sources would open up new avenues of creativity on earth at the same time? Chemical fuel and…
What Determines A Limit to Growth?
By Cynthia Chung This is an article version of a class Cynthia Chung gave for the symposium “The Earth Next 100 Years” which can be viewed here. What Determines a “Limit to Growth”? This might seem like a rather ignorant or simplistic question to some. Many will think the answer rather obvious, that the Limit…
The Dynamics of Nuclear Power Diplomacy: Russia and China vs the Neo-Malthusians
In 1975, an influential Stanford biologist named Paul Ehrlich (author of the misanthropic 1968 Population Bomb) stated that in his view, humanity’s acquisition of fusion energy was “like giving an idiot child a machine gun”. Ehrlich’s views were shared widely among the peculiar sect of scientists that have come to be known as neo-Malthusians. Ehrlich’s colleague John…
As Above, So Below: Re-Uniting the Macroverse with the Microverse Symposium
Although western civilization currently enjoys some of the highest rates of education ever seen in history, it appears that the rates of insolvable problems in the political, economic, military and even scientific spheres have multiplied far faster. If education and science are meant to empower each generation to problem solve, and make ever-more refined discoveries…
Atomic Physics and Macrophysics: How Breakthroughs in the Atom Affords Us Freedom to Explore Space
As humanity progresses towards higher forms of development, enormous amounts of energy are going to be required. In the developing nations, which host most of the human population, this has become an urgent necessity. On a different level, conventional fuel used in rockets and photovoltaic cells used in satellites will not suffice to power mankind’s…