It didn't evaporate because it is constructed carefully not to, but that doesn't mean it isn't blazing hot, just like the gas burner on your stove can be made out of aluminum which would be melted by the flame if it ever became mis-aligned.
But that doesn't mean the flame has a temperature lower than the melting point of aluminum, it just means that whoever designed it knew enough to ensure that the aluminum is never exposed to more than that it can handle in spite of being in close proximity to something that is able to melt it instantly. The biggest factors there are flame shape, stand-off and cooling effect of the gas supply itself.
Note that when you casually write 'plasma' that you are talking about material that is so hot that it has shed all of its electrons, it is just the nuclei that you're looking at and if it so much as touches anything at all it will waltz right through it as if it isn't there. See also: plasma cutters[1] for a nice demonstration of what happens when you use these facts to your advantage. But for things like plasma based fusion they are a very tricky problem because you have to maintain the plasma while simultaneously extracting energy from it.
The device shown in the video is very, very nice and well engineered, it is amazing that they got it work as well as they did with such simplicity but the process is eminently unsuitable for energy generation as far as I understand this stuff, keeping the plasma stable and cooling the whole thing uses many kilowatts. It's an improvement over a linear accelerator or a tokamak for the production of short lived nucleotides it is not an energy generating device.
[1] Plasma cutters also don't instantly disintegrate the cutting tip, that's because they blow copious air through the nozzle to keep the hot plasma away from the tip itself and to direct it onto the workpiece that you are cutting. But woe to you if your air pressure unexpectedly drops.
Although the plasma cutter creates extremely hot flames, it operates at room temperature and does not require powerful radiation protection, except for protective goggles, and it is easy to turn on and off. This sets it apart from the blast furnace. Similarly, a cold reactor may require a source of high-energy particles with very high temperatures to start, but they operate at room temperature, are easily turned on and off, and cannot be used to create a bomb. Note that heat is the problem for an isotope breeder because the reactor will require more powerful cooling. It's not designed to generate heat or electricity. This doesn't mean that it's not possible to create a cold reactor that generates a lot of heat, but it also doesn't mean that such a reactor will be economically viable. We don't know.
I mean that it is time to stop stigmatizing Cold Nuclear Fusion because a reactor for isotope breeding could have been created 30 years ago, saving many thousands of lives. The hating of Cold Fusion has cost many people their lives. It would be better to allocate a small fraction of a budget for other nuclear power plants and direct them towards CF, because the cost of CF iteration is orders of magnitude lower, and a few million dollars or euros could significantly advance science.
Can you explain why you continue to say things that make no sense after it has been pointed out to you multiple times by multiple people? It's a bit strange, normally you'd realize your mistake and adapt, but you seem to persist in purposefully misunderstanding what it means when people talk about 'room temperature fusion'.
Let me spell it out once more and then as far as I'm concerned we're done here. Room temperature as a qualifier for a process means that the entire process operates at room temperature. Boiling an egg does not take place at room temperature, even if it takes place in a room. Superconduction - for now - does not take place at room temperature but far below it (this may change shortly, the jury is still out on that). Plasma, aka the fourth state of matter can in very extreme cases be created at low temperatures but we're talking about a couple of nuclei worth at best ( https://www.livescience.com/64422-plasma-cooled-with-lasers.... ) but normally only does so at thousands of degrees.
This means that the term 'room temperature' simply does not apply.
> This doesn't mean that it's not possible to create a cold reactor that generates a lot of heat
You really should read that sentence again. Cancel out the double negative and see if it makes sense to you.
> The hating of Cold Fusion has cost many people their lives.
This is complete nonsense.
> It would be better to allocate a small fraction of a budget for other nuclear power plants and direct them towards CF, because the cost of CF iteration is orders of magnitude lower, and a few million dollars or euros could significantly advance science.
Science budgets are limited and tend to be directed to areas that are suspected to be fruitful. This makes it hard to get funding for what is - charitably - called crank science (or, more precisely, pathological science), which includes cold fusion. If you are a strong believer in the concept you should fund it yourself rather than to put the burden of your beliefs on others.
Temperature is statistics. Our bodies are penetrated by high-energy cosmic rays, but they do not change the room temperature. Cosmic muons can accelerate tens of thousands of nuclear fusion reactions in a deuterium-filled lattice, melting the metal, but it does not change the room temperature a lot. So, at what temperature do these reactions occur? On one hand, high energies are required to overcome the Coulomb barrier, and on the other hand, the reaction does not require heating of materials to 1MK or higher.
I have used the term Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (low relative to High Energy Nuclear Reactions in thermonuclear fusion). LENR allows for the creation of a cold fusion reactor, that can be started at room temperature and operated at low temperature, unlike thermonuclear fusion reactor. Please, see the difference between «nuclear reactions» and a «nuclear reactor».
> You really should read that sentence again. Cancel out the double negative and see if it makes sense to you.
Not a native speaker. It makes perfect sense in my native language. :-/
> This is complete nonsense.
I mean that delay or absence of medical treatment caused lot of premature deaths in these 30 years. Progress saves lives. Delaying of progress reverses the process.
> Science budgets are limited and tend to be directed to areas that are suspected to be fruitful. This makes it hard to get funding for what is - charitably - called crank science, which includes cold fusion.
As you see, private capital is not afraid about loss of scientific reputation. IMHO, it will easier to get funding for LENR reactors when they break the ice. I was unable to find a funding for similar idea before the war.
> If you are a strong believer in the concept you should fund it yourself rather than to put the burden of your beliefs on others.
I will try that after the war. However, I may pursuit a different goal - a bluster (photon streams with watts of energy per single photon), to kick Russian drones out from the sky.
Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of the molecules in a substance, a measure of velocity.
> Our bodies are penetrated by high-energy cosmic rays, but they do not change the room temperature.
They in fact do. Every time a high-energy cosmic ray interacts with a particle in the room the room temperature goes up. The chances of that happening are small because from the perspective of such a ray space is very much empty. But some substances (such as water) are pretty good at absorbing those rays and that's part of the reason why hard radiation is risky for organisms.
> So, at what temperature do these reactions occur?
Those reactions, when they occur are more like traffic accidents. The impact results in the transfer of kinetic energy and will result in a 'shower' of particles emitting from the point of impact and some of those particles in turn will fragment (but slightly later). They will typically spray out from the impact point. Cloudchamber photographs can show you in nice detail what such interactions look like. So the question at which temperature those reactions occur doesn't really have meaning, each particle has it's own velocity and the end result is some photons emitted by the electrons of the excited particles and probably some new particles (think of them as fragments spraying out from a traffic accident).
> Cosmic muons can accelerate tens of thousands of nuclear fusion reactions in a deuterium-filled lattice, melting the metal, but it does not change the room temperature a lot.
I can't parse any of this. But you're going to have to trust me on the physics of electostatic confinement fusors: the losses are such that there is no known path to producing net energy through that method. You can fuse nuclei, and your link above is interesting but it doesn't change the fundaments at all, it is an optimization and a good one but it doesn't get you closer to 'net out' any more than being able to run the 100 meters in 5 seconds would get you closer to breaking the lightspeed barrier, or like how piling up bricks gets you closer to the moon with every brick but you will never get there.
> So, at what temperature do these reactions occur?
This is again not a very meaningful question, the answer is 'much higher than room temperature'. The interesting question would be: does it produce more energy than you put in and if not can it be improved so that it does and I'm afraid the answer is simply 'no'.
> LENR allows for the creation of a cold fusion reactor, that can be started at room temperature and operated at low temperature, unlike thermonuclear fusion reactor.
That's a novel interpretation of the words 'cold fusion', and uses 'low temperature' in a way that I'm not comfortable with, even if it stops short of getting into the millions of degrees.
> I mean that delay or absence of medical treatment caused lot of premature deaths in these 30 years. Progress saves lives. Delaying of progress reverses the process.
Nobody is delaying progress. Well, maybe except for those that would siphon off budget from legit science to pursue their pet fringe science subjects.
> As you see, private capital is not afraid about loss of scientific reputation.
And that's perfectly fine. Whoever manages to do this in their garage will win a Nobel anyway. But if you don't have an advanced physics degree the chances of you discovering a novel principle for fusion that leads to net energy out on your table top are nil, and if you do have that degree you are probably not much better off. If there was so much as a theoretical path to net energy out fusion that does not require many billions of $ you can bet that there would be people all over it, in fact I would wager that we would have already found it.
> IMHO, it will easier to get funding for LENR reactors when they break the ice.
Possible, but not likely, see above bit about breaking the speed of light.
> I was unable to find a funding for similar idea before the war.
That's not surprising, really. Investors tend to evaluate the risks.
> However, I may pursuit a different goal - a bluster (photon streams with watts of energy per single photon), to kick Russian drones out from the sky.
I wish you all the best with that. But do be aware that a single photon carries no more than 10^-19 Joules and that Watts are a measure of power, not of energy...). This makes me suspect that you know a lot less about this stuff than the confidence with which you present yourself warrants.
This doesn't looks like a healthy discussion. I will reply to healthy bits only.
> That's a novel interpretation of the words 'cold fusion', and uses 'low temperature' in a way that I'm not comfortable with, even if it stops short of getting into the millions of degrees.
I'm aware that many scientist are interpreting cold fusion as «room temperature nuclear reactions», then immediately discard the baby with the bath. It takes lot of energy to explain that «Low Energy Nuclear Reactions» doesn't mean «No Extra Energy Nuclear Reactions». It just LENR guys are trying to lower the Coulomb barrier or boost performance, to make reaction happen in cooler environment, while ITER guys are trying to make hotter environment.
> But do be aware that a single photon carries no more than 10^-19 Joules and that Watts are a measure of power, not of energy...).
I'm obsessed with ideas of reproduction of quantum effects at macro scale, so macro-photon is my goal №1. Of course I have no knowledge required to do that, because it will be for the first time, but I have an idea for the starting point.
But that doesn't mean the flame has a temperature lower than the melting point of aluminum, it just means that whoever designed it knew enough to ensure that the aluminum is never exposed to more than that it can handle in spite of being in close proximity to something that is able to melt it instantly. The biggest factors there are flame shape, stand-off and cooling effect of the gas supply itself.
Note that when you casually write 'plasma' that you are talking about material that is so hot that it has shed all of its electrons, it is just the nuclei that you're looking at and if it so much as touches anything at all it will waltz right through it as if it isn't there. See also: plasma cutters[1] for a nice demonstration of what happens when you use these facts to your advantage. But for things like plasma based fusion they are a very tricky problem because you have to maintain the plasma while simultaneously extracting energy from it.
The device shown in the video is very, very nice and well engineered, it is amazing that they got it work as well as they did with such simplicity but the process is eminently unsuitable for energy generation as far as I understand this stuff, keeping the plasma stable and cooling the whole thing uses many kilowatts. It's an improvement over a linear accelerator or a tokamak for the production of short lived nucleotides it is not an energy generating device.
[1] Plasma cutters also don't instantly disintegrate the cutting tip, that's because they blow copious air through the nozzle to keep the hot plasma away from the tip itself and to direct it onto the workpiece that you are cutting. But woe to you if your air pressure unexpectedly drops.