Plasman-made Sun

I Know I'm Reaching There

So what!  It's not as if you have to pay to read this stuff.  This particular Intro is inspired by a report on the pages of the BBC's news website, the font of all that's fit to be writ.  It concerns the successful initial trial of an experimental fusion reactor titled "JET", doubtless the result of many sleepless nights of cramming and brainstorming.  About the title, not the reactor, because it has to be an unlikely acronym.  Let us have a look-see - ah! - "Joint European Torus", even if it's situated right here in This Sceptred Isle.  Art!

     These things run hot.  HOT.  Hotter than the sun.

     Which brings us back to a plaintive Guardian headline from the Eighties: "Will man's sun ever shine?" where they were being, frankly, utter Cassandras about nuclear fusion power.  The sub-editor who wrote that headline is probably wriggling in embarrassment today, given JET's success.  Art!

 

Art!  You bafune!

     I'm busy now, Art, so you can look forward to discipline via Tazer afterwards.

     ANYWAY as I said, these things run at temperatures of, ooooh, about ONE HUNDRED MILLION DEGREES, so don't touch.  This temperature is needed to create a plasma (hence today's title), which of course - obviously! - is the fourth state of matter.  To prevent it melting the torus, it is kept in suspense by not telling it the end of the latest episode of "Murder She Wrote" within a magnetic field.

JET with puny human for scale

     Currently (do you see wh - O you do) the problem with torii like this is that they consume more energy than they produce, though this discrepancy is shrinking all the time, and when the REALLY large ITER torus comes on line, it ought be capable of breaking even.  So, JET managed a mere five seconds in it's first successful run, which might not seem much of a duration - okay, okay, it's not much of duration; JET can't sustain more than this thanks to it's design.  A good start.  Give it fifty years and these things will be dotting the landscape and edging us ever-closer to "The Expanse", where cheap fusion power is an underpinning of human civilisation.  Art!

The Epstein fusion drive in operation

     All well and good.  I would hate for my interstellar invasion force to take over an insalubrious, technologically-absent backwater.

     Motley!  Put Sheila Chandra on the turntable.  That surely counts as fusion?

Yerkes-Dodson Observatory

Or not.  Conrad had this odd-couple pairing crop up in his head last night, for no good reason.  "Obviously a North American astronomical site," I decided, before thinking to check it out on teh Interwebz.

     O.

     Art?

ATOMIC-POWERED LASER BATTLE STATION!

     Or not.  I had monumentally erred, because Yerkes-Dodson were a pair of psychologists who worked on productivity and output as related to stress, over a century ago.  Art!

     South Canadian management ought to pay more attention to this, after hearing a lot of horror stories on Youtube Reddit channels about how they mis-treat their employees.  "One day off every three months, and think yourselves lucky!" and worse.

Death From Above Part Three

We've examined, briefly, the history of people unlucky enough to have been hit by meteorites, which amounts to not a lot on a global scale - perhaps 50,000 across 10,000 years, which you might compare to the 1,350,000 killed ANNUALLY in traffic accidents.

     Yes, but -  All it needs is for one giant space rock to impact Planet Earth and it's suddenly Planet Dearth.  It's happened before, over a century ago, at an incredibly remote place in Siberia called - you may be ahead of me here - Tunguska.  All of three people were killed across an area of over 800 square miles, whereas the death toll in European Ruffia could have been in the millions.  Art!

     O by the way, this Giant Space Rock never hit the ground; whether meteorite or comet, it exploded well above ground zero.

    The Ruffians seem to come in for more than their fair share of aerial astronomical bombardment.  Remember that fireball in 2013?  Art!

CAUTION!  Not an ICBM

     This puppy went off 14 miles above ground zero, with the explosive yield of a 440 kt nuclear weapon.  Too high to cause immediate injury, the broken windows it shattered injured over 1,500 people.  How's that for another near miss?  You know what they say, third time's the charm*.  This is why NASA and other agencies are scouring the skies for more Moderately-sized Space Rocks; the Giant ones are easy to spot and track, it's the smaller ones you need to watch out for.  If you can detect them early enough you can try to intercept, as well as trying to  evacuate the impact site.  As Captain W.E. Johns said, in this age of guided missiles, it pays to watch out for unguided ones, too.

I WARNED YOU!

Let's Have Horror On A More Intimate Scale

Time for your daily dose of mental mint, "Tormentor" again.  Let me just examine what's about to arrive - 

First, he needed to get to the next day.  Emerging from a shower in bathrobe and wet hair, he heard the front door bell sounding.

               ‘Hello Mister McMahon.  Is this a bad time?’ asked Detective Oswald.

               ‘Depends on the news.  Is this another Final Warning?’

               ‘Not at all.  No, I thought you might like to know that Eric Miller committed suicide earlier this afternoon.’

               Louis leaned closer, all attention suddenly on the policeman.

               ‘Oh?  How entirely satisfactory.  I hope it was slow and painful.’

               No comment from the officer.

               ‘So his conscience caught up with his mind.  Thanks for your information, Detective.  Can I go and dry my hair now, or do I need arresting?’

               The officer shook his head.

               ‘I don’t suppose you want to explain what you had to do with it?  We know you were at the police station this morning when he fell over and you grabbed hold of him.’

               Wrinkling his brow, Louis pretended to think seriously.

               ‘Let me see – I grabbed hold of him when he fell over.  That’s it.’

 

Detective Sergeant Oswald tried to stare down the brazen lecturer, who refused to be brow-beaten.  The feeling that McMahon was involved in the death of Miller couldn’t be shaken, thanks to his long police experience.  Proof, however, was another thing altogether.

     As if the plodding minds of the plods could grasp the secrets of the Krell! concept of supernatural revenge from beyond the grave, and how, exactly, could they prosecute same, given the statues of English law?

ENGLISH law, Art.  Not South Canadian.

Finally -

Your Humble Scribe is enjoying listening to his i-pod's various tracks being played in apparently random order via the Humungous Television Monitor.  I have noticed that they are only being presented as from the relevant album, not the individual track themselves, perhaps a function of being a higher-numbered folder?

      I cannot play them at the volume I'd like to, which would cause the windows to rattle like castanets, because our Reasonable Neighbours have a newly-arrived infant in the household, quite besides how utterly sinister some of these tracks would sound to a baby.  On the other hand, perhaps exposure to The Mars Volta at a formative age is a good thing?  Answers in the Comments, please.

*  This is, of course - obviously! - a very peculiar interpretation of 'charm'.