Wildly speculative ideas about Fusion and some potentially unanticipated risks.

First off, this is just for fun... OK?

So I'm going to credit this post to u/klyde_donovan because of an inspiring and ongoing discussion about fusion and physics... and to this scene from Spiderman 2.

This is the one where Doc Ock is working on what is obviously supposed to be some kind of fusion reactor.

So what happens in the movie seems to be the unexpected creation of an out of control Black Hole in the lab.

Now let's have some fun. Let's just hypothesize that we still don't understand everything there is to know about what goes on in the interior of the Sun (or any star).

Let's say that, when conditions are right, a small black hole is created in the center of every star. How?

It could be something like what happens with W and Z bosons being "generated" from neutrino-matter interactions. A neutrino is a very low mass particle, but somehow (according to Fermilab) it can "emit" a boson that is 100x the mass of a proton or neutron.

So a supermassive particle that goes "pop" in 1 ten thousandth of a trillionth of a second. Result is a smashed nucleus and the release of lots of energy.

If there's an unknown reaction in stellar cores that does something similar, you could see an even more massive and more unstable particle (ie. a singularity or something close to it) at the center of a star.

You get a small black hole that probabilistically "wants to collapse" [because entropy] but it's creating an event horizon and also a Hawking radius.

Relevant article

One more conjectural step...

The Hawking radius will define the boundary that separates particle emission vs particle "consumption".

In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking studied1 what happens when a pair of particles is produced from the vacuum of space near a black hole’s event horizon — the boundary beyond which nothing can escape. He found that one of the particles would be absorbed by the black hole, and the other would be emitted into space in the form of thermal radiation, which is now called Hawking radiation.

So according to E=MC² , what's a possible result?

Well, all of those particles from "the vacuum of space" (ie. the quantum field) represent mass energy. So you're perhaps tapping into the energy of the quantum field itself (maybe this is that zero point energy I've heard about?)

That particles going into the singularity might increase its mass. Or they might represent an energy input that stabilizes the singularity against entropy.

And maybe the outside of a really small Hawking sphere is a lot "hotter" than the surface area of a larger mass Black Hole with a correspondingly larger surface area? If the smaller ones are "hotter" than the larger ones, a small (perhaps microscopic) Hawking sphere might be hot enough to provide the spark that causes fusion in the surrounding plasma. Maybe this is how stellar ignition occurs?

In space, I'm gonna go with Electric Universe Theory and their ideas about galactic currents of electricity going through plasma and creating magnetic fields and self organizing structures like a Z pinch.

Maybe enough energy and enough mass concentrated in a small enough volume/duration of spacetime can create a "spike mass effect" similar in nature to the characteristics of those W or Z bosons? Except this would be a lot more energy than neutrinos in neutrino detectors.

And a larger mass black hole would be perhaps more stable than a small one. Now, back to Earth.

I'm going to wonder if some fusion physicists know about the potential Black Hole problem? If this was true, it would explain why progress towards a working fusion reactor has been so slow. They trying to edge their way bit by bit towards a stable fusion reaction that doesn't involve the possibility of a black hole.

Perhaps the conditions required for a stable (and net output) fusion reaction also overlap with the conditions needed to form a singularity. And a physically smaller and lower mass reaction might be a lot more susceptible to the kind of fluctuation that would "tip the boat over".

tldr; All of these recent Fusion tests and announcements might represent some form of fusion brinksmanship between China, Europe and everyone else.

And maybe we could just stick with better solar panels?

submitted by /u/Teth_1963
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/C_S_T/comments/nq5h6w/wildly_speculative_ideas_about_fusion_and_some/