On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 10:02 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: "Hairy metal laser show produces bright X-Rays" > -- Setting metallic wires on fire creates a bright X-Ray glow > > http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/11/hairy-metal-laser-show-produces-bright-x-rays/
Thank you, Lou, for the references. In the one above, the author comes to this conclusion: That said, these laser systems are bit facility-like themselves. The laser > that the researchers used could produce two Joules of energy in a 60fs (a > femtosecond is 1 x 10-15 s) pulse. At the surface of their target, they > reached intensities of 5 x 1018 W/cm2, which is pretty intense—though > nowhere near as intense as they could have made it. And the "low" intensity > is important. These lasers are big machines that require constant tender > loving care. > > But it is possible to get the same intensity from a shorter pulse that is > focused to a smaller area with much lower energy. My back-of-envelope > calculation suggests that the same thing could be achieved with 20mJ > pulses, which is something you can achieve with lasers that you can > purchase today. The implication seems to be that you could get 5E18 W/cm2 with 20mJ pulses using a commodity laser (and possibly far higher). He discounts the idea that the experiments mentioned in the article could be translated into fusion research, "since there are likely to be some problems getting hydrogen or deuterium to grow in thin, long hairs", but it seems to me that a very promising line of fusion research is standing right in front of him. A first thought is that you would not need to get hydrogen or deuterium to grow in long hairs. I'm sure that any physicist worth his or her salt is aware that you might be able to dramatically improve upon the conditions seen in man-made fusion devices by scaling things down. It is a little bit of a mystery to me that this avenue has not been further explored. To those who would write this area off as "hot fusion," I would respond that this is a huge assumption that relies upon some speculative hypotheses about the differences between LENR and hot fusion. I'm inclined to think that they're not different at all, and that the primary difference is that in LENR there's something thermalizing the energy in a way that doesn't result in gammas, fast particles and typical fusion products. Eric
