This is like whack-a-mole. If it's not one thing, it's another. We are
getting a reprieve from the painful reminders of NIF EoS threads, and
I'm sure those people involved are breathing a sigh of relief. This
time, it's about NIF ignition!
Title: IGNITION FAILED
Source: Science News
Date: April 4, 2013 (web)
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/349381/description/Ignition_Failed
Title: IGNITION FAILED
Source: Science News
Date: April 4, 2013 (web)
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/349381/description/Ignition_Failed
Comments
Ed id right, finding the Higgs turned out to be a huge disappointment in the end. The same thing is true of ignition. If ignition worked it would mean Nature is boring. These are exciting times.
I agree that not having ignition is an exciting result as well.
One thing it clearly shows is that the simulations are only as good as the input which goes into the code.
I wish some of the computer people here at LANL would finally wake up to this fact, and realize that only data are credible scientific proof of a theory.
The last thing I want to add, is that in a system where science is driven by milestones and managers who are only interested in PBIs, it is a miracle that NIF is even able to perform at this level.
Disclaimer: I work at LANL.
NIF: "I'm not dead"
Congress" "You soon will be"
NIF" I'm feeling better after we missed the September 30 deadline"
Congress: You're not fooling anybody.........WHACK!
Source: The meaning of LIFE
Right on, after all we are on the fast track to becoming the Pyongyang of US science and technology.
April 6, 2013 at 7:47 PM
Huh?? String theory has nothing to support it but you. The standard model has the Higgs. Experiment always beats theory. Get a clue.
April 7, 2013 at 8:08 AM
Obviously you are not a scientist. You are using the layman's definition of the term "theory," not the scientific definition. Experiments prove hypotheses, not theories.
Ed, where are you getting your weed from? Make sure it's pesticide-free.
April 7, 2013 at 7:56 PM
First, I'd recommend you learn how to spell "recommend."
April 8, 2013 at 8:35 PM
Nothing to do with NIF. Couldn't care less about NIF. Why on earth would you thing I was in any way connected with NIF? NIF is irrelevant to anything important in the world (including spelling).
April 8, 2013 at 8:47 PM
Because you misspelled "think"?
Pot signing off -- so long kettle.
Of course this has noting to do with NIF, or any other unimportant issues, only the decline in our country's ability to turn out well-educated, well-rounded, headed-for-success graduates. That's why we have our colleges and universities holding classes to teach freshmen how to read. Note that there are no Asians in those classes. Take a lesson.
Scooby, delete as you will. Your loss. Maybe this should be a top post, as if real education of our children, or the failure thereof, were important to the maintenance of our scientific and technical capabilities, important to the success of all the national laboratories.
For example, ignition may have failed (that's the nature of science), but how was it even possible for NIF to spend their entire budget in 6 months, and why should the rest of the lab's programs pay for it?
EOS is only an issue by a single poster on this blog. The poster sounds a tad bitter and somewhat crazy so your mileage may vary.
In full disclosure, I think NIF is the biggest red herring the lab has chased since Star Wars. But deep down I hope something useful comes out of it even if it SRD.
A long time ago, a Greek was working on something called the steam engine. The initial experiment did not work, so bloggers or graffiti artists in that day said "Shut it down" "he does not understand eee oh ess, whatever that means". Mankind was held back more tha 1500 years by small minds. Let us not make the same mistake with NIF.
April 10, 2013 at 5:12 PM
It's not small minds at NIF, it is small vision, i.e., blinders. Perfectly brilliant people chasing a pipe dream instead of the important stuff. We could use all that expertise if it weren't enthralled with the NIF fantasy.
We should be so lucky. The key star wars technologies are deployed off of the coast of North Korea tonight, poised to try to take down a frightful intruder.
Thank Bush for the existing ABM system.
"And did the Greek take money from other scientists, because he overspent his budget?
April 10, 2013 at 5:42 PM"
Suppose our Greek did overspend his budget? Only a small mind would use that to set us back 1500 years. They also said that the steam engine is 1500 years old. History rests its case
"We should be so lucky. The key star wars technologies are deployed off of the coast of North Korea tonight, poised to try to take down a frightful intruder.
Thank Bush for the existing ABM system.
April 10, 2013 at 9:41 PM"
Ohh...there is no LLNL star wars technology key or otherwise that is being used off Korea. Using a ground based rocket to shoot down another rocket is a much older idea that has nothing to do with star wars never has never will. Maybe using a rocket from space to shoot one down is but that is a pipe dream. And no Star Wars did not break the back of Soviet Union and no Bush along is not responsible for AMB.
If did away with all the badness at once, this blog wouldn't be such an irritant to those trying to divert your eyes using propaganda and troll tactics.
Try starting a new reasonable discussion thread (not a hater), and watch it get changed off topic.
I think we need to clear a few things up on NIF.
Questions: Is NIF a failure?
Answer: No NIF works and works as it was designed to work. It was made to look at a specific realm which it is doing. Ignition was a possibility only. We now know more about ignition than we ever had before. It may not work but that is science folks. NIF also trained thousands of people for the labs in training they could not get elsewhere. We may not know for 15-100 years if NIF will pave the way for useable power, but if it does it will be huge.
Question: Does NIF cost too much?
Answer: No for big projects the cost if NIF is fine. For the potential payoff huge. Remember this also pays for the people and NIF has the very best people in the world. It is an investment for the future. NIF also shows that rest of the world just how powerful the United States is.
Ok now that is settled we can let the peanut gallery cry but the facts are the facts.
EoS keeps rearing its head for the fact that is is one of the counter cases to the propaganda by lab managers posting anonymously to this blog. And all of us remember the con-job that the LAB inflicted on Friedman and others. To now say that ignition "was a possibility only" is the not-so-clever switch. They can't even do bread-and-butter stockpile stewardship related measurements. But the ignition fanfare was going full blast. Typical con artistry.
And I love the statement "NIF also shows that rest if the world how powerful the United States is." Are you joking me? We're already powerful for the scientific accomplishments in other fields like biotech and materials. NIF is a liability on our image because the lab fools itself into thinking that an engineering feat translates to scientific excellence. Yet they can't even provide any technical explanation for past failures and keep blundering on producing more and more questionable results. And the lab knows it too.
Laser
Inertial confinement fusion
Ignition
Hohlraum
D-T fusion
Power production
LIFE
Ed Moses
Stockpile stewardship
Equation of state
Thomas L. Friedman
Plasma instability
NNSA
National ignition campaign
Failure
George Miller
Dianne Feinstein
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Tantalum phase transition
Wrong on all accounts.
(1) NIF works
(2) The people are the best in the world. Who else has anything even close to NIF? The push for an academic community at the labs is not valid. We are not a university. What matters to Universities is not what matters us. The costumers for universities are students, our costumers are the NNSA. The idea that we have to somehow maintain academic standards is false and dangerous.
LANL had an "academic" mindset and it led to Wen-Ho Lee, stolen mustangs, missing disks, fires, and meth. We cannot...we must not go down that road.
(3) Your opinions on confirmation bias are just that...your opinions nothing more and nothing less. You can also have the opinion in Martians on the moon.
(4) Your opinions on EOS are just also opinions.
(5) NIF shows that world that we can make large scientific machines "THAT WORK" as intended. That is a powerful statement.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/hugh-gusterson/why-thomas-friedman-wrong-about-the-national-ignition-facility
"...
He does note (at the end of the column, of course, where it won't be seen by many readers), that he isn't sure NIF can be made to work as a viable commercial technology. But much of his golly-gosh evocation of NIF (complete with a comparison to the USS Enterprise from Star Trek) reads like a weak paraphrase of shovel-ready prose from the lab's public relations department. Surely New York Times readers have a right to expect more from a high-profile columnist than an embellished press release.
...
He does note (at the end of the column, of course, where it won't be seen by many readers), that he isn't sure NIF can be made to work as a viable commercial technology. But much of his golly-gosh evocation of NIF (complete with a comparison to the USS Enterprise from Star Trek) reads like a weak paraphrase of shovel-ready prose from the lab's public relations department. Surely New York Times readers have a right to expect more from a high-profile columnist than an embellished press release."
This is the history of NIF build upon lies. Lying to congress is really not a good thing. Didn't your mother raise you to be better than that? Sure, achieving ignition would have washed away your sins in the eyes of the public. But you should not have banked on only the "possibility" of ignition.
Now the messaging by the lab is to expect for ignition pushed out to 100 years (so long as LLNL gets its money). If so, then ignition research should be performed in academia. According to point 2, therefore, LLNL has no business continuing the program "their way" based on the extended timeframe for the likely achievement ignition.
What a great legacy to leave to our kids.....
LLNL banked on ignition to wash away all of the sins that they were perpetrating and all the failures they were accumulating. They lost that gamble. It's time to let other non-con-artist institutions take the reins. The days of hiding failure and deceit behind a fictitious veil of secrecy are long over.
It would be a whole long thread of names and events to capture these cases of LLNL abuse. We can start one.
Speaking of retaliation, does anyone know of any circumstances where LLNL has tried to go legally after a non-employee outsider (the media, advocacy group, bloggers, contractor whistle-blower etc.) to try to silence them? Would be nice to have a list that includes outsiders if there are any such cases.