Scientists Want to Create a Star on Earth?

Scientists are hoping to exploit these enormous explosions by somehow harnessing Fusion energy some day, but in the mean time, they are trying to create a device for creating Fusion, and it just so happens that the easiest way of creating Fusion is through a star.


First of all, you may be thinking to yourself right now: aren't the centers of stars really, really hot? Well, yes, and that’s the whole point of the project; Fusion, which is basically when the very center of stars create constant explosions caused by colliding two Hydrogen atoms (the most abundant element in the universe), this collision causes the Helium element, and a single Neutron to be formed in the center of the star. The lonely neutron, in turn, is then released as pure energy, or heat.

Obviously, creating a star on earth would be very problematic for many reasons; the atmosphere would light on fire; our sun could fit about 108 earths inside of it; another “sun” in our solar system would completely ruin the earth’s gravitational rotation, etc., if it weren’t for the fact that the scientists are going to create the star from a speck of fuel a little bigger than a pinhead.

So how much energy are we expecting to get out of this? Well, to put it into perspective: it will use a laser that focuses 1,000 times the electric generating power of the United States (or 10 billion times more energy than a house hold light bulb releases) into one spot for one billionth of a second, and it will release at least 10 times the amount of energy put into it.

It’s an amazing form of energy, and as soon as we learn to harness it, we will be able to “say goodbye” to fossil fuels. The only question is: what will happen to the human race? With all of us not needing to do anything physically straining (due to free energy via Fusion), will the only thing useful for use to do become using our brains to create new machines and designs to help us explore the universe, giving us all we ever wanted, thus creating the ultimate utopia, or will we all turn into “couch-potatoes”, and not do anything productive other than reproducing and colonizing?

Sources:

-Scientists plan to ignite tiny man-made star

-Nuclear Fusion: Scientists Attempt To Create Artificial Sun On Earth

Related Links:

-CNN: Can world's largest laser zap Earth's energy woes?

-Horizon: Can We Make a Star on Earth

Is universal language really a good thing?

Pretty much everyone has heard of a “universal language”. The idea is so interesting that it’s gone viral, and not just in television series like “Firefly”, but also in politics. In fact, as some of you may know, we already have a universal language: Latin. The only problem with Latin is, however, no one can speak it natively.

So we find ourselves with a problem: if we want a universal language, we’re going to have to base it off of a pre-existing one. However, before we go and decide what language to keep, we need to think about whether or not we should even have a universal language.

They are extremely useful for getting ideas across (no more translating, or language based miscommunication), decreasing racial intolerance, and many other things, but they do have a downside; for there to be a universal language, there needs to be popularity in that language, and with popularity rising in one language, popularity decreases in another. In other words: having a universal language kills off other languages, and with those languages all of their history, and culture is killed as well.

Of course, one can attempt to translate it all, but the whole cause of the language's downfall is from a lack of popularity, meaning that hardly anyone will care then, but certainly many will care later (not necessarily for that specific language, but definitely for the whole of lost languages).

So the question is: is it really worth all of the wealth of the culture and history of all of the minor languages to have a single universal language?