Michel Laberge knew he couldn’t beat the existing multibillion-dollar fusion labs at their own game. So instead, he decided to combine ideas from the two current approaches to make a vastly cheaper machine Canadian startup General Fusion has designed a machine to generate fusion power by smashing together two variants of hydrogen atoms: deuterium, which …
Chung-lie Wang passed away October 30, 2011. He was 86. He was born in Qichun Hubei on Qizhou Town Long Street. It was a street which produced nearly a hundred PhDs, and thus known as “Dr. Street.” He had a B. S. (Taiwan), M. A. (So. Carolina), M.S., Ph. D. (Rutgers). He lived in Regina, …
This site has covered deaths per terawatt hour per energy source. Energy Source Death Rate (deaths per TWh) Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity) Coal – China 278 Coal – USA 15 Oil 36 (36% of world energy) Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy) Biofuel/Biomass 12 Peat 12 …
This site has looked at a revised list of technologies for a Mundane Singularity This article will focus on what should be the developments in those areas that will have the biggest impact by Dec, 2016. The Mundane Singularity still has a normal adoption and deployment cycle. So the impact will increase over time. ie. …
Kirk Sorensen presented an Introduction to Flibe Energy at the Thorium Energy Conference 2011 (55 pages) Flibe Energy will initially design, develop and demonstrate a small modular liquid-fluoride thorium reactor (SM-LFTR) for the US military. * Desired first demonstration at a military site to be determined. * Design power level of 20-50 MWe. The SM-LFTR …
Femtotechnology: AB-Needles.Fantastic properties and Applications, 24 page paper by Bolonkin In the article “Femtotechnology:Nuclear AB-Matter with Fantastic Properties” American Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences. 2009, p.501-514. Bolonkin offered and considered possible super strong nuclear matter. But many readers asked about the long-term stability of the proposed nuclear matter. It is well known, the conventional …
In 1800, just 3% of the world lived in urban areas. Today that figure has passed 50% and by 2050 it will likely reach 70%, with cities like New York, Mexico City, Moscow and Shanghai growing exponentially. The 2011 annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative had a topic of the rapidly urbanizing world population …
I was interviewed by the Voice of Russia America about the Russia plan to develop tunnels and bridges for connections across the Bering Strait Technically doable and I think there could be economic justification for oil pipeline The undersea pipeline as a first step looks very technically doable at first glance. The technical challenges are …
The Hamilton project has shown that US productivity growth has stalled since about 1973. The underperformed of 2% per year has resulted in the US being half as rich per capita as it could have been if we had maintained the 1948-1973 trend I was on the World Transformed interview series and discussed existential risks …
Jamais Cascio at Open the Future laments about conventional futurists Consistently accurate predictions about interconnected complex systems are functionally impossible, at least at any real level of specificity. It’s long been known that even people paid far too much money to make predictions about a constrained system (such as the stock market) usually do no …
This site has looked at a Mundane Singularity before and often about getting to higher rates of economic growth and wealth. Previously I talked about a Mundane Singularity with how much : 1. Economic abundance 2. Radical life extension 3. Physical and Cognitive enhancement 4. Blood Stream Robots 5. Supermaterials 6. Open Access to space …