This is an invention that might change civilization as we know it: A compact fusion reactor developed by Skunk Works, the stealth experimental technology division of Lockheed Martin. It's the size of a jet engine and it can power airplanes, spaceships, and cities. Skunk Works claims it will be operative in 10 years.

Aviation Week had exclusive access to their secret laboratories and talked to Dr. Thomas McGuire, the leader of Skunk Work's Revolutionary Technology division. And revolutionary it is, indeed: Instead of using the same design that everyone else is using—the Soviet-derived tokamak, a torus in which magnetic fields confine the fusion reaction with a huge energy cost and thus little energy production capabilities—Skunk Works' Compact Fusion Reactor has a radically different approach to anything people have tried before.

The key to the Skunk Works system is their tube-like design, which allows them to bypass one of the limitations of classic fusion reactor designs, which are very limited in the amount of plasma they can hold, which makes them huge in size—like the gigantic International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. According to McGuire:

    [The traditional tokamak designes] can only hold so much plasma, and we call that the beta limit. [Their plasma ratio is] 5% or so of the confining pressure. [...] We should be able to go to 100% or beyond.

This architecture allows it to be 10 times smaller at the same power output of something like the ITER, which is expected to generate 500 MW in the 2020s. This is crucial for the use of fusion in all kind of applications, not only in giant, expensive power plants.

Skunk Works is convinced that their system—which will be the size of a jet engine—will be able to power everything, from spaceships to airplanes to vessels—and of course scale up to a much larger size. At the size of the ITER, it will be able to produce 10 times more energy, McGuire claims:

    It's one of the reasons we think it is feasible for development and future economics. Ten times smaller is the key. But on the physics side, it still has to work, and one of the reasons we think our physics will work is that we've been able to make an inherently stable configuration. In our case, it is always in balance. So if you have less pressure, the plasma will be smaller and will always sit in this magnetic well.

But we all know that the road to the dream of clean, unlimited energy is paved with failed inventions. The situation here seems different. First, Lockheed Martin is not a crazy dude working in a garage. It's one of the world's largest aerospace and military companies.

McGuire knows that they are just starting now, but he claims the design is sound and they will advance quickly until its final implementation in just a decade:

    We would like to get to a prototype in five generations. If we can meet our plan of doing a design-build-test generation every year, that will put us at about five years, and we've already shown we can do that in the lab. So it wouldn't be at full power, like a working concept reactor, but basically just showing that all the physics works.

Five years after that, they expect to have a fully operative model ready to go into full-scale production, capable of generating 100MW—enough to power a large cargo ship or a 80,000-home city—and measure 23 x 42 feet, so you "could put it on a semi-trailer, similar to a small gas turbine, put it on a pad, hook it up and can be running in a few weeks."

Source: Sploid
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/lockheed-martins-new-fusion-reactor-might-change-
humani-1646578094

The idea of “other dimensions” is an appealing one. It’s been called on to explain everything from ghosts and paranormal phenomena to UFOs and even Bigfoot. It’s implicit in science fiction concepts such as hyperspace or subspace, which make faster-than-light travel possible. Esoteric teachers often invoke higher dimensions to explain mystical concepts and experiences. Even mainstream scientists talk about “other dimensions” when discussing advanced topics such as relativity and string theory. Despite the huge divergence in the way the concept is used, all these disciplines – science, esoterica, science fiction and the paranormal – can trace their interest in other dimensions to a common origin in the 19th century.

It seems self-evident that we live in a three-dimensional world. A box has three dimensions – length, width and height. Each of those dimensions is at right-angles to the other two. It’s impossible to imagine a fourth dimension at right angles to these three (or at least, it’s impossible for most of us – a few people claim they can do it). On the other hand, it’s easy to picture fewer than three dimensions – if you draw a square on a flat sheet of paper then it has just two dimensions.

You can fold the piece of paper diagonally, so that the two opposite corners – a long way apart in two-dimensional space – are now almost touching. What was previously a long journey from one corner to another becomes a short journey through the third dimension. The science-fictional idea of hyperspace is a logical extension of this – if you could fold or warp three-dimensional space in higher dimensions then you could turn a long journey between the stars into a short one.

The first reference to curved or warped space occurs not in science fiction, but in a work of mainstream science. It was put forward in 1872 by a German astronomer named Karl Zöllner as a possible explanation of a longstanding mystery known as Olbers’ Paradox. If the universe is infinite in extent, why is it dark at night? Zöllner’s explanation for the apparent paradox is that the three-dimensional space occupied by the universe is curved in the fourth dimension. Thus distant stars “disappear over the horizon” just as ships disappear over the horizon on the curved surface of the Earth (this isn’t quite the way modern cosmologists would explain Olbers’ Paradox, although it may be a contributing factor).

Although Zöllner first arrived at the idea of the fourth dimension in a scientific context, he went on to take it in a more mystical direction. He was a great admirer of the English scientist William Crookes, an outspoken proponent of spiritualism. Zöllner went even further than Crookes, by suggesting that spirits live and move in four-dimensional space. What we perceive as ghosts are merely their three-dimensional “shadows”.

With the help of an American psychic named Henry Slade, Zöllner carried out a series of experiments to demonstrate that spirits could accomplish tasks that would be physically impossible without access to the fourth dimension. He published his results in 1878 in a book, dedicated to William Crookes, called Transcendental Physics (available to read online). This was one of the first systematic attempts to study the paranormal using scientific methods – although the modern consensus is that Slade was a fraud, who fooled Zöllner using sleight-of-hand methods.

In one of Zöllner’s “spirit” experiments, leather bands became knotted in a way that would be impossible to accomplish (without trickery) in three-dimensional space.

The concept of the fourth dimension was developed in yet another direction by Charles Howard Hinton. He wasn’t a scientist or a mystic, but a mathematician – albeit a somewhat unorthodox one. He believed that striving to visualize four dimensional objects (which as I said earlier, is all but impossible for most people) was an effective way to expand the mental faculties – a kind of yoga for the mind. Hinton invented various shapes for his students to visualize, including a four-dimensional hypercube which he called a tesseract. His most important work on the subject was a book called A New Era of Thought, published in 1888 (again, the complete book is available to read online). Several people are supposed to have driven themselves insane trying to visualize Hinton’s tesseracts!

As far as mainstream science is concerned, the fourth dimension became firmly established early in the 20th century with the development of Einstein’s theory of relativity. This introduced the concept of a four-dimensional space-time continuum, which combines the three dimensions of space with a fourth dimension representing time. Although the idea of time as the fourth dimension wasn’t a new one, the novelty of Einstein’s theory lies in the fact that time was no longer independent of the other three dimensions. An object moving close to the speed of light becomes compressed in length and “dilated” in time.

In his general theory of relativity, published in 1916, Einstein was able to explain the phenomenon of gravity in terms of four-dimensional space-time. General Relativity was far from being a “theory of everything”, however – for example it could not explain electromagnetic forces. During the 1920s, two scientists named Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein proposed a theory involving five dimensions that would unify gravitation and electromagnetism. That was a step forward, but it was still unable to explain things like nuclear forces. Modern “theories of everything” need even more dimensions: the present record is held by M-theory, which invokes no fewer than eleven dimensions.

Source: Mysterious Universe
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/10/mysteries-from-another-dimension/

 
SHREVEPORT, LA (KSLA) - The National Weather Service in Shreveport says they picked up a debris field on radar Monday afternoon at the same time many people around the ArkLaTex reported hearing a loud boom.

According to Senior Forecaster Marty Mayeaux, the radar image appears similar to the debris field that was seen as a result of the explosion at Camp Minden in October 2012. Only this time, it appeared to originate in an area south of Wallace Lake in extreme northern DeSoto Parish, east of I-49.

Mayeaux says it showed debris was indicated rising 1,000 to 1,500 feet into the air, and that it drifted eastward toward Bienville Parish.

There was no precipitation in the area at the time, as the storms that moved through Monday were well into eastern Louisiana by 4:30 in the afternoon.

After the storms passed, winds were coming out of the northwest. In contrast, the debris field can be seen moving east before getting higher into the atmosphere and turning slightly northeast.

Mayeaux says the debris field was visible through at least 6 p.m. Monday night.

Debris fields picked up on radar consist of solid particles, yet there have been no reports of any explosions in the area of the debris field or in any of the surrounding parishes. There have also been no reports of any debris falling in the area, or any sightings of smoke or flashes of light.

The "boom," described by some as possibly a sonic boom, was heard just before 4:30 p.m. by many and reportedly felt by some. Numerous reports to the KSLA News 12 newsroom came in from Marshall to Greenwood, Keithville, Bossier City and beyond. Callers described walls shaking and windows rattling. While there were no reports of significant damage, some said the reverberation shifted or even knocked items off of shelves.

KSLA News 12 staffers at the station on Fairfield Ave. heard and felt the blast as well.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) says there was no seismic activity recorded in the area on Monday.

Mayeaux says he doesn't know why someone in the area of the debris field would not have reported seeing something. Based on the time frame and the fact that the radar scans every 6 minutes, he believes something had to have smoldered for 10 to 15 minutes in order for the debris to rise to the height that it did and remain on the radar for as long as it did.

And yet, Mayeaux says, "whatever happened that radar detected, it didn't elicit a response (from people in the area)."

DeSoto Parish Sheriff Rodney Arbuckle tells KSLA News 12 that oil and gas operations in the area were checked on Tuesday and no evidence of any explosions were found. Arbuckle says they may take a look around the area from the air on Wednesday if the weather cooperates.

Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton says there have been no reports of anything amiss Monday at Camp Minden, where explosives are stored in blast-resistant bunkers.

Greg Andrews with the Shreveport-Bossier Astronomical Society thinks that there may be an "extraterrestrial" source of the mysterious boom.

"The best answer is that it must have to be some type of meteor that for some odd reason we didn't see, and it exploded in our atmosphere," he said.

Source: KSLA
http://www.ksla.com/story/26783552/debris-field-spotted-on-radar-at-time
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