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Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by anon291 on Thursday November 07, 2024 @10:52AM (#42077711)
No this is actually using neural nets to predict and control plasma boundary disruptions, which is an intractible problem to solve numerically.

I've been studying plasma physics and from what I understand perfect control isn't necessary as long as you can control it long enough to get useful power. If the plasma dissipates you just restart. But ideally it's controlled enough that while it is in there, it's producing net energy

Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by psychoslave on Thursday November 07, 2024 @10:59AM (#42077792)
Is "producing net energy" really what’s physically happening here, or is it a shortcut for "extracting pre-existing matter/energy in a form we can canalize?
Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by anon291 on Thursday November 07, 2024 @11:03AM (#42077826)
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed (matter is energy)

When I say producing net energy I mean getting out more useful energy than we put in.

At the lowest level, the energy we received comes from the fact that the two nuclei fused have a lower energy state than they had individually and the remaining energy causes heat via the emission of neutrons

Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by CtrlAltmanDel on Thursday November 07, 2024 @11:09AM (#42077898)
"causes heat"

Heat is the transfer of energy due to a temperature differential. I think you may want to review the highschool physics textbook.

Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by lanternfish on Thursday November 07, 2024 @11:34AM (#42078165)
Even under your pedantic definition, the above commentator is still correct
Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by Jerrrrrrry on Thursday November 07, 2024 @11:24AM (#42078056)
no, that is work.

you may want to review the second law of thermodynamics

Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by anon291 on Thursday November 07, 2024 @11:28AM (#42078112)
Sigh... I'm not giving a physics lecture. Just speaking casually. The neutron energy imparts kinetic energy to particles which can be harvested in a well engineered system
Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by fkyoureadthedoc on Thursday November 07, 2024 @11:21AM (#42078026)
I never took high school physics so I asked my best friend what you're talking about and he (ChatGPT) said

> CtrlAltmanDel nitpicks anon291’s use of "causes heat," arguing that heat is energy transfer due to temperature differences. This critique feels overly pedantic, as "heat" is commonly used to describe energy released in fusion (even if "thermal energy" might be more precise).

I don't know if I should trust the machine god or the snarky commenter with a vapid one liner here. You're both very confident.

Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by gpm on Thursday November 07, 2024 @02:30PM (#42079999)
> I don't know if I should trust the machine god or the snarky commenter

Neither of these are worthy of your trust. Even if they had agreed.

Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by B1FF_PSUVM on Thursday November 07, 2024 @01:34PM (#42079453)
> an intractible problem to solve numerically.

Yeah, so we'll just get a reduced dimension model that we don't know how it works.

Sounds good.

Re:CMU, Princeton join forces to use AI for Nuclear Fusion by anon291 on Thursday November 07, 2024 @02:42PM (#42080120)
This is an engineering problem not a scientific one. We can wait for better analytic methods or we can use a technique that is mathematically proven to be able to approximate the exact solution if you throw enough compute at it to learn the functions