Discover Magazine - October 2010

[rj40]

The US edition of Discover magazine for Oct 2010 - this is the 30 year special anniversary issue - has a brief mention of EMC2 and Tri Alpha in a sidebar box on page 78.

[jsbiff]

The US edition of Discover magazine for Oct 2010 - this is the 30 year special anniversary issue - has a brief mention of EMC2 and Tri Alpha in a sidebar box on page 78.

Cool. I'll have to find a copy.

[TallDave]

Thanks for sharing!

Can anyone post a picture?

[rj40]

I have finally read the entire article. On the same page in the main article, they mention a Dr. Jaeyoung Park who is working on another fusion project in Santa Fe.

So people from Discover magazine are aware of EMC2 and polywell. Is that good, bad, or neither?

[Giorgio]

My opinion is that they probably know less than what we do.

[Betruger]

Especially considering journalists' tendency to get technical details wrong half the time.

[TallDave]

My opinion is that they probably know less than what we do.

A pretty safe assumption. And it's awfully hard for anyone who hasn't studied the concept for a while to put three sentences together on PW without making major errors.

If the gov't funding dries up, it's probably good there is more awareness which may lead to more private funding. OTOH, more awareness might be bad for gov't funding. The more ears that perk up over at DOE, the more likely that signficant flak will come from that direction.

[jsbiff]

Especially considering journalists' tendency to get technical details wrong half the time.

Wait. Let me get this straight. You think journalists get technical details RIGHT 50 percent of the time?!

[Betruger]

Yeah the better ones do

[KitemanSA]

It may actually be more the case that they fail to screw up that 50%. They are typically given ~100% correct information (from real scientists) and then procede to "simplefy" the piece, i.e., FUBAR the piece until 50% is meadow muffin. But sometimes they "just report the facts" and get them almost right!

[krenshala]

My favorite are the bits of info that are obviously accurate, but are strung together in what is a completely wrong fashion if you are familiar with the subject (e.g., like some of the reporting on Famulus' work ).

[choff]

The good thing about the article, EMC2 is still at it, we can deduce they haven't run into a problem that says 'polywell doesn't work.' This after starting with WB8 in April, six months ago. Otherwise Jaeyong Park wouldn't be optimistic. We can reasonably assume they're at some stage of testing the new machine if the final report is April 2011.

[TallDave]

It's probably not too much to hope they're running D-D by now.

64W of fusion should give us some nice neutron counts.

Can anyone scan this, or will I have to break down and acquire it in meatspace?

[Betruger]

It may actually be more the case that they fail to screw up that 50%. They are typically given ~100% correct information (from real scientists) and then procede to "simplefy" the piece, i.e., FUBAR the piece until 50% is meadow muffin. But sometimes they "just report the facts" and get them almost right!

Alan Boyle.

My favorite are the bits of info that are obviously accurate, but are strung together in what is a completely wrong fashion if you are familiar with the subject (e.g., like some of the reporting on Famulus' work ).

Yeah, articles like Space.com's. Or that recent metamaterial/Alcubierre news where no one seemed to have read the paper well enough to see it's a simulation of relativistic conditions, not an actual relativistic engine.