Another Fusion Scam

I'm sorry, but the goddamned diagram includes the words "superconducting magnets". FAIL.

 

FAIL FAIL FAIL. Was this published as a joke?

 

They should have saved this for April 1st. Real superconductors have to be supercold, a few kelvin, to work. High temperature superconductors do not exist.

 

Unobtanium, which is what high temperature superconducting magnets are made from, is never supposed to be in real things. Its a comic book element. You can tell from the name that its completely made up. This is a fantasy, exactly like the Princeton toroid. Which keeps being rebuilt to get some distance between the magnets in the torus and the supercooling system which is supposed to prevent the metal donut from melting despite the need for the magnets to contain the star-hot fusion reaction and if the cooling fails, even a little, the entire thing explodes because its a nuclear reaction, complete with plasma and neutrons and radiation. And the magnets require exotic elements to work better, but those absorb the neutrons from the reaction and become different elements with completely different chemical properties. Good thing it never worked or it would be a smoking hole in the ground which glows from the radiation. And the whole place would be listed as a national disaster area, permanently. All those dead liberals.

 

And the Nova Laser Ignition Center at Livermore Labs. It didn't work as predicted to cause molecular fusion so they doubled the power supply which ALSO didn't work. Then everybody working on it lost their jobs because it cost so much to build they had to sell Livermore labs itself. These huge sheds of batteries continue to not be useful, though the laser itself is a weird way to test nuclear weapons without actually blowing them up. Pretty sure there's easier ways. Livermore Labs deserved to lose its funding decades ago. And the sort have after that debacle.

 

Remember Cold Fusion? Back in 1989. Turned out that all the "positive results" were accidents caused by using the same contaminated source of Palladium electrodes. Total accident, and since they didn't check it BEFORE running their experiment, they found something after which suggested success, even though it wasn't. I have run into absolute lunatics who claimed to have Cold Fusion on their desktops. They were ignorant liars. Cold Fusion, if it had worked, would have generated incredibly lethal levels of neutrons and gamma rays because fusion does that, even at the molecular level. I researched it for the news story I wrote for my school paper back when this was new. And followed up in Physics Today when they figured out what went wrong.

 

Again, people are always ready to believe things which aren't true. This is why Snake Oil sold so well. And why people think that Marijuana Smoke cures cancer instead of giving it to you. People like being ignorant. They love embracing and celebrating stupidity. That's just how people are, and a large part of why I love libraries. They are the opposite of ignorance, and everybody who goes inside is seeking knowledge. They are leaving their ignorance behind.

 

I don't understand why the Lockheed Martin Skunkworks is willing to publish such an easily disproven fantasy and wreck their reputation for serious engineering projects. This doesn't fit their decades of steady service to America. Flipping out for Snake Oil is bizarre. Allowing this scam to be associated with their good name is likely to cause their stock value to crash. Why, oh why, would they do that?