Billion Degrees! Have we stumbled upon something new?

I'm totally fascinated by it. A non-nuclear source of massive amounts of energy? I wonder how efficient/expensive the procedure is compared with the joule output. There is a geeky discussion of it at slashdot, which has some enlightening parts.Maybe its the end of the world. If we translate it into greek it becomes the - (Omega machine), which is a damned ominous name :-)

I know that high pressure has been known to effect decay rates, but requires stupdendous pressures to effect it by a tiny amount.

I don't think it is more likely now. It is still possible of course, but reading this article:

quote:

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The results, recorded by spectrometers and confirmed by computer models created by John Apruzese and colleagues at Naval Research Laboratory, have held up over 14 months of additional tests.

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Haines theorized that the rapid conversion of magnetic energy to a very high ion plasma temperature was achieved by unexpected instabilities at the point of ordinary stagnation: that is, the point at which ions and electrons should have been unable to travel further. The plasma should have collapsed, its internal energy radiated away. But for approximately 10 nanoseconds, some unknown energy was still pushing back against the magnetic field.

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If there was such an error, I'd have thought they'd have caught by now. I'm more inclined to think something previously unknown is going on, even if it isn't a miracle solution to all our problems

What do you mean?