Physics always could inspire design and art. Starting from cubism up to the latest move of convergence influenced by the unified theory of nature.

A beautiful poster from the American Physical Society.

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Back in late 2004-2005 I was involved in a huge EU project for MHD simulation of plasma bursts. I was in particularly involved in programming the cellular automata simulation algorithms. Currently, ITER is being build at Southern France, which is actually the biggest tokamak ever build. The goal is to confine plasma and reach the critical temperature to start the fission reaction so that free energy can be produced. The issues are both on the physics and the engineering of the problem. The physical problem is to efficiently solve the Navier-Stokes MHD equations (numerically since exact solutions are not feasible) so that to eliminate unstable state phenomena. Another objective is on the material science point of view so that new materials to be build that stand up to 10M Kelvin. Various confinement mechanisms have been adopted, one of them being an RF MWatt power antenna that resonated with the plasma waves a device designed and constructed by the Electric Engineering department of NTUA and Electronics division of Kapodistrian University of Athens.

There is an old saying in the physics community that the slower result generation curve is that of the fission community. There is an on going research all over the world for the past 20 years that has lead to very little results. The existing Tokamaks can obtain fission temperatures just for some seconds (fision bursts) and the confinement problem has yet been addressed with success. The nature of the problem which is strongly non linear making the solution even more difficult and sensitive to initial conditions.

The thing is since I am reading more and more blog posts for EURATOM and fission community, -which by the way is one of the best promoted in the physics community -that fission is will be a production technology not sooner than 50 years from now. The immediate years are the fusion era so everything you hear abou free energy on the way be more than sceptic. The energy lobby, especially in the US is shifting towards fusion, something that we will withess soon enough in our neighbourhood, with Bulgaria Turkey and Albania having plans fos immediate fusion power plant constructions.