This Starfish’ Butt Is Actually Its Arms

Does that image remind anyone else of Half-Life?

Hey! Here comes another Neatorama T-shirt : I survived the National Ignition Facility! Hoorray, go science! ;)

Mmmm Gort think maybe mix batshit and smelly yellow powder from Volcano with Burnt wood. Mmm Gort love paste made from all three on top of Leaves. Mmm now Gort have after dinner smoke *BOOM*

So lets try and build a "Mini Sun" on the "Earth". What do you do if it is a complete success, and you can not put it out? Can we just call these fellas at the NIF "Gort"?

It's a small hydrogen bomb explosion, but without the uranium bomb trigger. Wonderful!

I hope they are not suicidal mad scientists trying to blow up the world...

Wait, why are they trying to poke that guy on the cherry picker with a giant pencil? Or did those mad bastards shrink that man???

...I really need to read the article before commenting...

a star is really like a (long lasting) perpetual atomic explosion (on a huge scale, of course). So a mini-sun should be like a little nuclear explosion, right? I hope they make sure its short-lived.

speaking of surviving the Hardon Collider, did they actual do collisions? I thought it was postponed because of some helium leak?

Spiderman II anyone?

Science is getting crazy!

It's crazy!

What they're going to draw it with a giant pencil? Reminds me more of Duck Amuck.

Anyway, why should we worry? Pistol Shrimp fire that kind of heat off all the time.

http://tinyurl.com/7a3xpj

It's a race to see who can blow up the world first.

or alternatively

Who can recreate the best black mesa.

LHC already has that one guy so i think they're in the lead.

A "fusion" reactors are safe. They WILL NOT melt-down like the fission reactors we currently use. If something goes wrong in the system, the reaction stops immediately. So there is no chance of a melt-down or large nuclear explosion.

In addition there is no harmful radioactive bi-products or pollution produced from the process.

You guys should be excited!! This is a big deal, if they can ever get a fusion reactor to work. If they can get a net gain from the energy they put into the process, then the worlds energy needs would be solved overnight.

This didn't work out so well the last time they tried it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cglaHHuotz0

LOL Awesome Mustache :P

I'm surprised the words "inertial confinement" don't show up anywhere in the article. Like Morris said, if this works, the world's energy problems will be solved. I'll be very impressed if this actually works, as I'm not aware of any other fusion reactor that has even reached break even let alone a gain of 10.

The wonderful thing about fusion is that you're basically able to choose the products of the reaction, based on what you decide to fuse, unlike fission which is guarenteed to produce dangerous radioactive particles. Fusion is 100% safe, unless you count the extremely high operating temperatures and high-energy neutrons (theoretically used to create tritium).

And even though the primary fuels are rare isotopes of hydrogen, there's enough deutrium to sustain all the fusion reactors we could possibly need for longer than the sun will live. And tritium, as I mentioned above, can actually be bred as a byproduct of the fusion reaction. Frickin' sweet!

And no, it's not like the sun or Spiderman 2 in the sense that we won't be seeing a sustained ball of fusing matter. In the case of inertial confinement reactors, reactions last a fraction of a second, multiple times per second. Think rapid pulses of energy.

Sweet, I'll be able to tell my friends I have miniature stars right down the street from my house.

I can't wait to see what comes out of this. hopefully it will be incredibly awesome.

Dun worry its K spidys gonna save us.

I made a bunch of the optical components for this. lets hope it works. lol

wat is your myspace page