Radioactive Boy Scout

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Rich Tate

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While not exactly tech related, anyone who can build a homemade nuclear fusion reactor from parts he scrounged up on Ebay is pretty damn smart in my book.

In 2006 Thiago Olson joined the extremely sparse ranks of amateurs worldwide who have achieved nuclear fusion with a home apparatus. In other words, he built the business end of a hydrogen bomb in his basement. The plasma "star in a jar"—shown at the left—emonstrated his success.
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If I was a college recruiter that boy would be receiving a full scolly offer for my science dept. :D That's awesome!!
 
next month steve will be posting another story here about a larger crater, somewhere else in the mid-west, formed by some mysterious explosion :p
 
i know about someone who did it before Ebay was about ;) it was on channel 4 lol
it was a bot scout as well (strange, confusion in time maby ;) ) and he mailny made it out of fire alarms etc.
his garden had to be dug up and shipped of as it was to badly irradeated, he is now introested in biochemistry o0
 
yeah so how did he afford all that? its alot easier to suceed with the support of daddys wallet
 
Sorry to say, but Bubble Fusions or "Star in a Jar" is not actually fusion. It was a theory for a while, and about 7-8 years ago a scientist from california thought he did it. He published a paper about it that was subsiquently disproved. He revised it and again it was disproved.
 
sh0gun said:
i know about someone who did it before Ebay was about ;) it was on channel 4 lol
it was a bot scout as well (strange, confusion in time maby ;) ) and he mailny made it out of fire alarms etc.
his garden had to be dug up and shipped of as it was to badly irradeated, he is now introested in biochemistry o0
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I remeber reading about that quite awhile back, cant remember where though.

Martyr said:
yeah so how did he afford all that? its alot easier to suceed with the support of daddys wallet
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Thats what my question is, as well. People usually want stupidly high amounts for crap on ebay, even if it was all free, the shipping cost alone on some of that stuff...
 
Hit submit by accident.

The formation of bubbles and detection of neutrons is not proof of fusion. Neutrons are needed to create the bubble so any detection of neutrons arnt coming from fusion, they are coming from ambient neutrons moving around. Not to take anything away from the kid, hes obviously smarter then me. But the media just didn't get this story right. As I couldn't quickly find any true scientific info on this, here is a BBC Horizon documentory on it.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7187541145045439484&hl=en
 
urinal said:
Sorry to say, but Bubble Fusions or "Star in a Jar" is not actually fusion. It was a theory for a while, and about 7-8 years ago a scientist from california thought he did it. He published a paper about it that was subsiquently disproved. He revised it and again it was disproved.
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You're mixing up "cold fusion" and real fusion. Cold fusion was a theory put out by university of utah professors but was discredited. This boy actually created the basic framework of a real fusion reactor, the same type that's being worked on in the National Energy Labs in NM. It's also the same basic tech as the Tokamak reactor in France by the U.S., U.K., and E.U.

The problem that everyone is having, including this kid, is that in reality it takes much more energy to put into it that you get out of it. You have to have a higher temperature than the sun (which obviously is a fusion reactor) to account for the massive pressure difference that is (of course) not here on earth. Making a stable, high temperature reaction is extremely difficult, though I believe not impossible. Whoever can get that stable and controleable reaction is, literally, saving the world from energy problems, pollution problems (mostly), and a lot of fighting over natural resources.
 
the radioactive boy scout is also a good book, about a kid who did this back in 1995... without any access to the internet etc... true story too, google it
 
I say we call homeland security on his ass..

plus.. i thought nuclear fusion was not done yet.. what we do is nuclear fission no?
 
RancidWAnnaRIot said:
I say we call homeland security on his ass..

plus.. i thought nuclear fusion was not done yet.. what we do is nuclear fission no?
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No, we can easily do nuclear fusion. However, we can only do it with one of two caveats. EITHER:

a) More energy is put into the reaction than comes out of it (i.e. every fusion reactor out there right now)

b) It's an uncontrollable reaction (see thermonuclear bomb)

This kid's reactor falls under category A, which is a good thing.
 
masteraleph said:
No, we can easily do nuclear fusion. However, we can only do it with one of two caveats. EITHER:

a) More energy is put into the reaction than comes out of it (i.e. every fusion reactor out there right now)

b) It's an uncontrollable reaction (see thermonuclear bomb)

This kid's reactor falls under category A, which is a good thing.
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i still say we report him to homeland security.. :D
 
This is also in the current Popular Science (Apr 2007, p 77):

How it works

Cost: $3,500

1. Two vacuum pumps suck air out of the central chamber, leaving a near-total vacuum. Loose atoms in here interfere with fusion and lower yield.

2. The chamber is filled with deuterium and jolted with about 45,000 volts of electricity. A negatively charged grid of thin steel wires attracts the now-positive particles, sometimes
causing them to collide.

3. Colliding particles fuse to form helium-3. The resulting neutron emission is measured, proving that fusion occurred.
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Pretty cool project, but also very inefficient.
 
sh0gun said:
i know about someone who did it before Ebay was about ;) it was on channel 4 lol
it was a bot scout as well (strange, confusion in time maby ;) ) and he mailny made it out of fire alarms etc.
his garden had to be dug up and shipped of as it was to badly irradeated, he is now introested in biochemistry o0
Click to expand...

I remember that article, that was a fission reactor, not fusion. Very ingenous, though, and much cheaper than the fusion reactor. I bet they both get nice offers for scholarships.
 
Techx said:
next month steve will be posting another story here about a larger crater, somewhere else in the mid-west, formed by some mysterious explosion :p
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Naahh, lab explosions are quit common in the midwest, and are usually meth related.
 
Roberty said:
If I was a college recruiter that boy would be receiving a full scolly offer for my science dept. :D That's awesome!!
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I think it is safe to say that kid will have a free ride to pretty much any school with a good science dept that he wants to go too.

Anyway props to him. Yea the guy that did it in the 50s had a harder time as the information was not as available but hell it is still good work.
 
Some kid here in Michigan made one, was very effective, so effective that if something went wrong he would have taken out the entire neighborhood.
 
Ockie said:
Some kid here in Michigan made one, was very effective, so effective that if something went wrong he would have taken out the entire neighborhood.
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Got a link to that? I'd be interesting in reading it.
 
tesfaye said:
It's mentioned a few times that this kid refused medical screening. There is no mention of why. I'm surprised that this was even an option for him given the circumstances.
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he is smart enough to know what he exposed himself to... would you really want to know how fsked you are or just live your life as per the usual?
 
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