Fusion: Energy of the Future?

With all the talk these days of global warming and the need for new cleaner energy sources, most of the talk revolves around solar energy and wind energy. Although these two types of energies have been making technological breakthroughs in the past decade, they still have a long way to go until they can satisfy a sigficant fraction the the world's power needs. However, an alternative energy source that is often overlooked but is beginning to make significant technological progress recently is nuclear fussion. Not to be confused with nuclear fission, which is the process taking place in today's nuclear reactors, nuclear fusion involves the combining of atoms, such as hydrogen isotopes, to create an enormous amount of energy. This is the same process that takes place inside the sun.


Fusion reactors would provide huge advantages over all of the present types of energy, especially nuclear fission. Fusion uses abundant sources of fuel, does not leak radation to dangerous levels like a nuclear reactor does, and will also not produce nearly as much radioactive waste as a nuclear reactor. Also, the fuel needed for fusion is abundant on earth. Deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, can be easily extracted from seawater, and lithium, an alkali metal, is abundant in the earth's crust. With all these abundant fuels and the many advantages that fusion reactors would provide, the earth's energy needs could be completely satisfied in a nonpolluting way.


However, there are still some minor problems that need to be solved before fusion can be put into practical use. First of all, fusion can only occur at temperatures upwards of 100 million kelvin, which is about six times hotter than the sun. The reason that the sun can achieve fusion is because of its large mass and strong gravity field that compresses all its mass towards the core. Although this high temperature requirement may sound physically impossible, it actually has been achieved on a small scale using microwaves, lasers, and ion particles. As for the pressure requirement, so far possible solutions could include using intense magnetic fields or ion beams. With the current technology, only one part of the fusion process is possible, but technology progresses so swiftly that the rest of the fusion process could be feasibly achieved in the next few decades.


Another form of fusion that could possibly be used for energy needs is cold fusion. In 1989, researchers in the U.S. and United Kingdom claimed to have created sustained fusion at room temperatures using heavy water, palladium, and an electric current. However, when scientists around the world tried to replicate this experiment none of them could get the same result. Recently though, scientists at UCLA initiated cold fusion using a type of crystal in a container filled with hydrogen and an electric current.


Fusion may not be a practical energy source for at least a few more decades, but when it is, is could theoretically provide an abundant energy source for the entire world. Besides this abundant energy, fusion is also clean, safe, and results in a much smaller amount of nuclear waste. It will be very interesting to see how this and other alternative energy sources develop and are implemented during our lifetimes.

iPad: Next Hot Gadget or Not?

This week Apple unveiled its newest product, the IPad. Anticipation for the revealing of this new product had been building for months and now that everyone has seen it, was it worth the wait? Many people don't think so, including me. Apple has been known for its revolutionary products since it first released the original Ipod a decade ago. Every single time they released a new product, I was wowed by the new features that it had: video, touch screen, etc.

The IPad, however, doesn't seem to incorporate any new technologies, which has many people simply referring to it as "a big Iphone". It has the exact same features as an Iphone except that it has a much larger screen, so it seems to be geared towards the booming netbook market. Will consumers, with their budgets already strapped down by the recession, dish out $500 just for the base model of the IPad? I think not. Whereas the Ipod and iphone created entirely new markets with their revolutionary technologies, the IPad is entering into a market already saturated with similar products. Sure these products may not have a touch screen and be extremely sleek like the IPad, but without any groundbreaking technologies being offered in the IPad, consumers have no reason to purchase it if they already own a netbook.

Of course, with any apple product, this thing could end up selling like crazy. It may not be revolutionary, but people just seem to love the products that Apple makes. One thing that Apple does extremely well is market their products. We all remember at least one Apple commercial in recent times and this is because they do such a great job connecting to the consumers. Even if it's not worth the money, once some people start buying it, everyone else will follow. If the IPad does actually sell well, it will probably be because it's the "cool" thing to buy, not the "practical" thing.