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Re:The Theory of Interstellar Trade by avian on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @02:16AM (#17547671)
> I'm pretty sure there's no known, theoretical, or speculated material or process that can contain and capture the results of fusing some elements to, say, uranium.

Producing heavy elements in a lab is most certainly possible right now. You don’t need a supernova, just a particle accelerator. Many elements heavier than uranium have been created artificially this way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transuranium_element

Re:The Theory of Interstellar Trade by squirrelicus on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @02:38AM (#17547773)
You're right. But synthesizing enough material to be relevant to an industrial effort is a leap of engineering so large as to be beyond our capacity to imagine its possibility.
Re:The Theory of Interstellar Trade by cinquemb on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @03:03AM (#17547873)
With the way that resource allocation seems to be bound by presently, if there was a war, and one/some group could some how get the resources to scale up such processes if they could seriously convince the war planners of its "super weapon" capabilities, I could see it happening even if it took a couple years to get a working prototype at scale (depending on its ability to not compete sufficiently with other resources for war to not purse such project at all). And seeing that humans haven't came up with the abilities to avoid war completely, it's only a matter of time (which may be a lot for an individual humans lifespan).