Random stuff from the internet #2

August 3rd, 2009 by shai

Going through the TED archives harvesting gems for my latest post produced this video, which I decided to leave out, but now realized it’s too cool to ignore:


Idea+square=Origami

Random wikitrekking taught me about the Ravoux’s slavemaker ant, which fakes it’s death in order to be carried by rival ants into their nest, where it eat’s the queen, wearing it’s corpse and start spawning furious warrior ants which take over the nest.

The Design Inspiration threw me over with an wonderfully colorful selection of 25 artist renditions of the Wizard of Oz.

And on a musical and neurological note, let Bobby McFerrin help you find your pentatonic self:

My favourite TED talks

August 3rd, 2009 by shai

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is the body beyond one of the most fascinating and fruitful annual conferences in the world. Every year, top chart names in fields related to the tree components of the body’s initials gather from all around the world to lecture about what it is they are doing. Actors, magicians, musicians, public leaders, artists, scientists and much more whose most prominent share point is the fact that every single one of them gave the world a genuine insight.

TED are generous enough to have the videos of each and every of these talks available for free on their website and Youtube page, which I have been following piously during the last three years.

The variety and sheer volume of the accumulating talk archive is growing exponentially intimidating, so in order to provide a sufficient jump-start I’ve collected some of my personal favorites, enjoy!

Jill Bolte Taylor on how it feels to have a stroke


The human brain can be ever so surprising. We know so little about it’s inner workings, but it’s immensely complex structure forces us to reverse engineer it from abstract to neurological. The best way to do so, so far, is by examining abnormalities and comparing them with what’s considered to be a normally functioning brain. That’s exactly why it’s so exciting when a neuroanatomist experiences a stroke and lives to tell the tale.

Incredible high school musicians from Venezuela! Led by Gustavo Dudamel


It’s amazing what talents trove in humanity, waiting to be tapped even in the most struggling populations.

Theo Jansen on The art of creating creatures


Sculptor Theo Jansen applies his knowledge of anatomy into designing and putting together most intricate mechanisms of self mobilizing animal sculptors to roam the beaches. When evolution meets art.

Garrett Lisi on his beautiful new theory of everything


This video has definitely been around the block quite a few times. There aren’t many people in the world who can truly understand Lisi’s theory (though I did come across a decent share of people who thought they could, claiming that they “don’t know the physics or math but appreciate it for it’s philosophical meanings” blah blah blah), but any math and physics savvy person could empathize with it’s elegance and simplicity. Though we’ll have to wait for a mega collider to actually start operating before we could confirm any predictions, it’s surely one of the most popular speculations in science today. It’s a bit overburdening one, but if you survive the mathy intro there are pretty animations to follow.

David Bolinsky on a fantastic voyage inside a cell


Science is a product of education and research. Education is the based on examination and demonstration, which rely in turn on visualization. That’s why the advancement of scientific illustration is crucial to the advancement of science. Bolinsky’s highly enthusiastic project to animate everything we know about the cell is a captivating example of how art can reinforce science.

Bill Stone’s Journey to the center of the Earth … and beyond!


If you think this blog is desolate, you should see some of the places this crew is climbing down into!

Common misconceptions #2: Toilet flush spin orientation is hemisphere dependant (Coriolis effect explained)

July 12th, 2009 by shai

Misconception: Toilet water spin clockwise in America and counter clockwise in Australia when flushed.
Actual facts: Only true for a perfectly symmetric toilet in a vacuum.

The sources of this myth lie in the prediction of a subtle theoretical observation called the Coriolis effect. Using the Coriolis effect it can be derived when no other forces act on the liquid other then gravity, it will spiral due to Earth’s movement, and the direction of the spiral reverses between hemispheres.

But what is the Coriolis effect?

Earths rotation creates a curve in respect to a non rotating viewer

Earth's rotation creates a curve in respect to a non rotating observer

The Coriolis effect is considered a fictitious force, but that doesn’t make it untrue. It means that it’s not an actual force, but a force like phenomenon which is derived from the fact that the system is spinning. It doesn’t mean it’s not real, it’s just not an energetic force. It can be mathematically handled as if it was a force, and therefor it’s convenient to refer to it as one.

To better understand the Coriolis effect we’ll walk through a thought experiment.

First, imagine the earth as a perfect sphere made entirely out of ice, with a sledge on the north pole. Now imagine someone giving that sledge a push strong enough for it to reach the equator. For simplicity’s sake we’ll neglect Earth’s curvature (though it doesn’t take a huge leap of logic to understand that all of the following arguments apply to a sphere as well as a plane). For a person standing on earth, the sledge seems to be going in a straight line. However, for an outside viewer not rotating with Earth (but still neglecting it’s curvature) - Earth’s rotation seems to curve the sledge’s track in the direction of Earth’s rotation.

Now let’s imagine the ice is neatly covered with golf balls. The balls aren’t packed together too tightly so they have freedom of movement, but they are abundant enough not to create gaps the sledge can fall through. Let’s try pushing the sledge down from the pole to the equator and follow it’s track. While it’s not very apparent at first, there’s a huge difference this time.

    Cloud formation caused by the Coriolis effect in Iceland (notice it spirals couter clockwise)

Cloud formation caused by the Coriolis effect in Iceland (notice it spirals couter clockwise)

When the earth rotates, it utilizes friction and gravity to make the golf balls go along for the ride. But since the friction is not perfect (the balls aren’t rooted to the ground), the balls actually move a tiny bit slower than the planet. While the gap is negligible when addressing each ball individually, the accumulating differences make the sledge curve against Earth’s rotation direction. This is where it gets interesting: to the observer on earth, the sledge seems to be curving in a certain direction, but to an outside observer it would seem to be rotating in the other direction. (Can’t it rotate in a different curve in the same direction, or not curve at all to the outside observer? Not really… figuring out why will be left as an exercise for the reader.)

Now, in order to latch our mental experiment onto reality, let’s imagine the golf balls, as well as the sledge itself, as any kind of object whatsoever. And the Planet as the Earth we know and love. The effect we imagined applies to any items not affixed to the ground, which lay on top of other items not affixed to the ground (like clouds riding air molecules).

And this relates to toilets… how?

Patience, I’m getting there…

Examining the Coriolis effect, scientists has made the observation that, since the rotation speed changes in respect to your proximity to the pole, there’s actually a symmetry, the matter closer to the pole has more energy, so the general direction of motion has a slight inclination towards the equator. Yet since the direction of the rotation is opposite for a boat going from the south pole and one going from the north pole, the effects of the Coriolis force should be opposite.

In what’s considered to be a stupendous demonstration of Newtonian mechanics, scientists filled a very large and very very precisely built bowl with a hole drilled almost exactly in it’s center. According to predictions, the waters did form a spiral, going counter clockwise on the north hemisphere and clockwise on the south.

So didn’t you just justify the myth instead of debunking it?

Not really. Remember, the bowl had to be very large and very precisely built.

For the Coriolis effect to be noticeable a few conditions need to be satisfied; the most relevant one is that if we draw any straight line which goes through the center of the (presumably round) draining hole of our toilet the mass of water on each side of the line would be identical. If it isn’t, the asymmetry would cause the water to spiral down the drain. But if we build an exact mirror image of the container (in respect to the line which exhibits the biggest mass difference) the water would spiral the other way around - independent of the hemisphere the container is on. This demonstrates the fact that simple calculations prove - the Coriolis effect is a few orders of magnitude smaller than other factors such as the geometrical shape of the container, the drain pipe’s tilt, surface winds and such. For such small amounts of water the Coriolis effect is so small it’s actually rendered negligible.

So yes, it’s technically possible to figure out what hemisphere you’re on using a bowl of water, but toilets? Well, they just aren’t accurate enough to be a reliable measurement device.

Whats the big fuss all about?

Next: Do advanced life forms have bigger genomes? Did modern society bring evolution to a halt? Have men evolved from monkeys? What is the purpose of evolution?

Some of my favorite misconceptions regarding evolution are going to be viciously exposed.

Ten selected classical guitar pieces, from Bach to Yngwie

July 7th, 2009 by shai

As far as I’m concerned, classical guitar is the most beautiful instrument in the world. The way the clean, almost celestial tone of the nylon strings and the variety of nuances that can be attained by a masterful strum join forces in the hands, minds and hearts of the performer and composer has brought a tear to my eyes on more than a few occasions.

A far descendant of the anachronistic lute, the classic guitar has been present in a respectable variety of musical realms; From early flamenco and adaptations for classical lute pieces, through the romantic musings of champion composers European composers and into the world of jazz and soft rock. The variety of tones and styles from such a simple instrument seems almost unlimited.

This article is more than a list of videos, it’s an attempt to choose the most appropriate pieces to accompany the interested reader through selected parts of the progressions the classic guitar took through the years. The videos are chronologically ordered as precisely as possible, and I’m all hope that my commentary would prove insightful.

Johann Sebastian Bach - Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring

Composed: 1723-1750 | Performed by: unknown

Comments: Also known as the 10th movement of BWV 147, “Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life“. This piece was originally a cantata, which means it was composed for an accompanied choir in church settings. The popularity of the 10th movement led Bach to write arrangement for an assortment of instruments. The origins of the popular guitar arrangement are unknown (as far as I know).
I can’t say I’m very much fond of this particular performance, but it’s the best I could find.

Isaac Albéniz - Granada (Serenata)

Composed: 1886 | Performed by: Andrés Segovia

Comments: During the years 1886-1887, Isaac Albéniz composed a suite called Espanola Op. 47 as a tribute to the queen of Spain. The Suite was composed of eight scores, each written in a different tonal property which represented the dominant musical idioms of romantic Spain. The most prominent work in this collection isn’t Grenada, but Asturias (Leyenda), which is one of the best known classic guitar pieces of all time, and by far the most prominent piece ever written by Albéniz. An ironic fact, considering that he was actually a pianist.

Francisco Tárrega - Recuerdos de la Alhambra

Composed: 1896 | Performed by: Johannes Moller

Comments: This piece, whose name translates to “Memories of the Alhambra“, was inspired by the Moorish red castle which lies on the borders of Granada. The exceptional tremolo technique required to play it vividly is an early testimony to the ever ending quest to find the limits of the instrument. While only approachable by the most accomplished performers of it’s time, this piece maintains slow and dramatic dynamics, and in this dichotomy lies it’s beauty.

Heitor Villa-Lobos - Chôros No. 1

Composed: 1920 | Performed by: David Russell

Comments: Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, often regarded as the single most significant Latin-American musician of the 20th century. The distinct harmonies and tempos which characterize his work seem almost independent on the classical European music from which he drew his inspiration. His most historically significant work is a compilation of 15 “Chôros”, a name he has given to pieces written in accordance with classic European tradition, but highly influenced in spirit by traditional Brazilian chorões.

Agustín Barrios Mangoré - La Catedral

Composed: 1921 | Performed by: Denis Azabagic

Comments: This short, three movement piece, is one of a handful of fabulous pieces composed by Agustín Barrios, which earned most his fame as an outstanding performer. Bach-inspired La catedral is considered his most impressive work, and was even praised by Andrés Segovia, then considered the world’s top performer.

Al di Meola, Paco de Lucia - Mediterranean Sundance

Composed: 1980| Performed by: Al di Meola, Paco de Lucia, John Mclaughlin

Comments: In December 5th, 1980, three talented guitarists hit a single stage at the Warfild Theatre in San Francisco to record the collaborative masterpiece  “Friday Night in San Francisco”. Paco de Lucia’s undeniable stardom in the world of contemporary south American Latin jazz and John Mclaughlin’s versatile fusion style were intermediated by Al di Meola’s jazz savvy Latin style to create a balanced show of hands. Of the 5 tracks available on the album, this piece is my favorite.

Leo Brouwer - Balada de la Doncella

Composed: 1981| Performed by: Giulio Tampalini

Comments: The Cuban composer Leo Brouwer is masterfully following the tracks of his predecessors, trying to find the limit of classical guitar while maintaining musical quality. Like Albeniz and Tarrega at their time, there are only a handful of people with the technical abilities required to play his pieces. This piece is called “A ballade to a pretty girl”, and it’s a piece of the 1981 suite El Decameron Negro.

Andrew York - Sunburst/Jubilation

Composed: 1986| Performed by: Andrew York

Comments: Andrew York is an active musician and an accomplished classical and jazz guitarist. Andrew is still musically active and has published 10 CDs so far. This piece is a cute neo-classical score based on early romantic composers (such as Fernando Sor) from his first album.

Yngwie Malmsteen - Flamenco Diablo

Composed: 1990’s| Performed by: Yngwie Malmsteen

Comments: Those of you who’ve heard of Yngwie are probably raising an eyebrow, but bear with me, please. Yngwie is considered one of the most technically accomplished and musically educated electric guitar players of all times. While playing mostly neo-classical metal (a genre which he pretty much founded himself, after some groundwork by Jason Becker) Yngwie never excluded the nylon axe from his arsenal. This specific piece (which isn’t available on any of his albums) is an interesting demonstration of a fusion between modern and classic music. I think it’s very well composed and performed.

David Qualey - Jesu Joy

Composed: 1995| Performed by: David Qualey

Comments: I actually bumped into that one by mistake when I tried (and failed) to find a respectable performance of the first piece in this article. I’ve never heard of David Qualey before, but the impromptu research I ran on him reveals, well… nothing you can’t find on his website. I like this video. It’s a modern arrangement of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desire, which is the piece with which this article started. This nice arrangement is very modern and has some qualities of soft rock, which gives nice closure to the small sightseeing journey we had through the world of classic guitar.

I hope you enjoyed the post and the music. It’s actually the first time I’ve ever attempted this kind of writing, so any feedback would be appreciated.

Common misconception #1: Tallest mountain in the world

July 5th, 2009 by shai

Trivia is fun. We all like hearing about cool new facts and spread our knowledge. Face it, we all like to indulge in appearing knowledgeable to our peers.

The problem with “common knowledge” is that it’s not very credible. It could be a speculation taken out of context, an outdated theory or even a complete fabrication and you would know nothing about it. I don’t think it’s a very harmful phenomenon, as it doesn’t have any actual effect on the people who actually do the research, but it does yield some interesting examples.

If you like being knowledgeable in public, you’ll love the list I’ve made for you, as it’ll help you appear even more knowledgeable on someone else’s expense.

Through the following series I’ll examine some widely known half truths.

The tallest mountain in the world

Misconception: Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world.

But actually: It isn’t, it’s merely the highest mountain in the world.

Mount Everest

Highest: mount Everest

Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the Great Himalayan range, an awe strikingly gigantic chain of mountains which separate China from Nepal. The highest peak of the Everest is 8,848 meters (29,029 ft) high, and is the highest piece of land on earth in terms of altitude.

The tallest mountain in the world is Mount Mauna Kea in the island of Hawaii. The highest land on the mountain (which isn’t a peak, but a plateau) is 4,207 meters (13,803 feet) high, which is less than half as low as the Everest in terms of altitude.

Tallest: Mauna Kea

Tallest: Mauna Kea

However, unlike Everest, whose basis is slightly above sea level, Mauna Kea’s lies on the ocean floor, 5,996 meters (19,673 feet) below sea level. At it’s highest point, Mauna Kea might be only 4,207 meters high, but it’s still 33,476 feet (10,203 m) tall, which makes it the tallest mountain in the world.

As I mentioned earlier, Everest is the highest mountain in terms of altitude, but to some people, that definition is counter-intuitive. Sea level isn’t even constant, with tides and all, they use an average value… an average value! In a way, it makes much more sense to have a fixed point of reference. Like the center of the earth.

Fruthest: Chimborazo

Fruthest: Chimborazo

But wait… in that frame of reference things change. We know that the earth isn’t spherical, but an oblate spheroid. Earth’s spin causes the ring around the equator to be a few kilometers further from the center than the poles. Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador peaks to an altitude of 6,384 meters (20,995 feet), but it’s within proximity of less than a degree to the equator, which makes it’s summit the furthest piece of land from the surface of the earth.

Means of disposal or a naviagtion device?

Means of disposal or a naviagtion device?

Next: I guess some of you have heard about the proclamation that toilet water spins the other way around in Australia.

Can you really use a toilet tell what hemisphere you’re on? A lot of people (thanks to a Simpson’s episode, if I’m not mistaken) will say yes, some more curious individuals will tell you that it’s a misconception. But what is this myth based on, and how was it born?

Stay tuned for an examination of one of the most moronic, yet scientifically accurate (in theory) myths in history.

Chaos Theory for kids

July 3rd, 2009 by shai

Mark Chu-Carroll, the man behind my favorite math blog, has embarked on a quest to elaborate chaos theory to the (interesed) general public.

Judging from the first post in the series, he’s simply tired of “idiots like Michael Crichton” who’ve heard somewhere that chaotic systems are systems in which the slightest change in starting conditions will have significant implications on the system and decided that’s what chaos is all about and that they’ve got it all figured out.

After the mentioned runt, Mark clearly describes the other two condition a system needs to meet in order to be defined as chaotic.

A rednering of an attractor

A rednering of an attractor

In the second post, at appears, he remembered that the general public isn’t as math savvy as the regular Ph.D, and backtracks a bit to explain what a dynamic system is in a way us laymen could understand.

The third and latest post (so far, hopefully) addresses the fundamental yet mind-boggling issue of attractors. He explains why he considers them to be the “black holes of a chaotic system” and how they’re used to create such pretty pictures.

Theories For Everything (A book review)

July 3rd, 2009 by shai
Theories for Everything front cover

Theories for Everything front cover

Preliminary examination

When I first laid eyes on this hefty tome I didn’t quite know what to expect.

Reading through the back review and jacket leafs revealed mostly words of praise for it’s writers. All three of which are acclaimed writers and editors for National Geographic whose portfolios aren’t short of impressive.

Yet still, this book seemed awfully big, and taking on a big book is a big decision.

I skimmed through the pages for a while trying to find a common ground and found myself increasingly lured by a colorful selection of pictures, drawings, graphs, time lines and embedded mini-articles on a variety of subjects - all of which accompany a main line of text which seemed to be surprisingly readable. I also became aware to the fact that the book is printed entirely on chromo, which does contribute to it’s size a lot more than the actual girth of the texts.

There and then I inferred that whatever this book is set out to achieve - I’m going to learn some neat stuff through the attempt.

Skimming over the introduction and content shed some light on the structure of the book; it’s essentially a collection of six independent articles, each addressing a different facade of the development of human knowledge and scientific methods. Combined with the shiny paper and colorful pictures the temptation was too big to ignore.

The articles presented in TFE are (in this order): the Heavens, the Human Body, Matter and Energy, Life Itself, Earth and Moon and Mind and Behavior.

The reading experience

Most popular science books I know fall into one of two kinds. The first kind is the over-elaborated attempt to explain every phenomenon mentioned in the book through an overburdening multitude of arcane analogies,  and cumbersome lines of thought composed of intuitive explanations that nobody could really understand what they’re supposed to represent. The second one is the allegedly “reader friendly” type of book, often laden with historical details, anecdotes, speculations, related stories and of the like; but lacking any actual insights regarding the topic of the book.

TFE is one of these special books, in which the balance between the anecdotal and the elaborate seems to be “just right”. Addressing each topic, the writers made an effort to shape the discussion into a narrative, carefully choosing the pick of the crop of ideas which are beautiful enough to explain it this frame and anecdotes which are valuable to the reader.

This somewhat journalistic somewhat storytelling approach might not be new, but when executed as expertly as it is in TFE, it can really make history and science a pleasure.

Sometimes it’s all about the structure

Even though the article assignments were equally distributed between the three writers, it’s apparent that a great deal of thought was put into keeping a stylistic uniformity. The most prominent expression of this uniformity is the mere fact that the review I wrote in the previous section of this post can be accurately applied to each chapter individually.

The book was edited in a manner meant to keep it a book, and not a collection of unrelated articles. The constant presence of time lines and mini-articles across the various chapters of the book also helps a great deal maintaining the consistency required for a wholesome reading experience. Cross references are constantly mentioned in the rims of the texts, and it’s appended with one of the most extensive reference list I’ve seen in a popular science book so far. It’s also suffixed with an impressive “further reading” list.

In conclusion

TFE might not be the most deepening popular science book, it’s obviously not the most focused one. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone who’s interested in acquiring any substantial knowledge in any of the topics it addresses.

Reading it has left me with the notion that the writers set out to provoke general interest and broader familiarity with science as a concept. Illuminating the reader not with a specific beautiful phenomenon but with the endless width of the complexity of our universe and the way we struggle to better understand it. It’s fluent and friendly, yet topical and straightforward style makes it my first recommendation for everyone who wants to widen his superficial knowledge of the main pillars of science; astronomy, biology, chemistry, math and physics.

Theories for Everything on the National Geographic online store.

Israel halting the Spirit of Humanity activist boat isn’t tenth as bad as you make of it

June 30th, 2009 by shai

I know I promised I would never use this blog to stress out my political views, and I’m standing by this.

The objective of this post is to debunk obvious biases spread by freegaza.org as a response to the latest endeavor to smuggle goods to Gaza using a marine pathway. As I’m not trying to legitimize any decisions made, but only to point out the details that Free Gaza like to ignore, I’ll plainly list it down.

Myth #1: Israel attacked the Spirit of Humanity
Actual facts: the Spirit of Humanity has been warned that it would not be allowed to enter Gaza due to a marine blockage. During the ship’s cruise it has been sent warnings from the Israeli navy several times where they were asked to head back.
When it became obvious that the ship’s crew was planning to neither turn back nor reply to any of the warnings, a navy crew boarded the ship refraining from any sort of violence (which means that no shots were shot, and no force was applied on the activists in person) and escorted the ship to Ashdod’s harbor.

Myth #2: Israel had no jurisdiction over the ship as it was sailing on Gaza’s territorial water
Actual Facts: As diverse as the opinions about that might be, the fact that Gaza is not a country remains. and therefor it has no territorial water. After the disengagement Israel has pulled it’s ranks and civilians from the narrow strip of land, giving Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) the mandate over the territory. Soon after, Hammas overrun Fatah in an armed revolt. The crisis has been at constant escalation ever since.
During this entire affair, no marine territory was ever discussed, and the water strip which surrounds Gaza belongs de facto to Israel’s territory.
When the Free Gaza movement claimed that they are sailing over Gazan territory, they weren’t stating a fact - but making up a term which doesn’t exist to propagate their propaganda. After that fact went out into the open, they’ve reshaped their story to the claim that the water strip surrounding Gaza is “international territory”. But a duck is a duck no matter how many names you call it, and the sordid fact is that truth is not on their side here.

Myth #3: Israel abducted the activists
Now, that’s just sad. The MDKC twitter feed (which, as far as I know, is administered by Free Gaza) was spreading the news of the alleged abduction while the activists themselves reported on their twitter feeds that they have been handed to their respective embassies. Some of them are already home.

Myth #4: Israel stole the goods in an act of piracy
After establishing that the ship’s crew was warned (and decided to blatantly ignore), no violence was used and the activists were led to safety ASAP, the only fact in that turn of events that makes the entire turn of events that remotely resemble an act of piracy is the retrieving of the goods. I guess that’s why Free Gaza never mentioned the fact that Israel delivered the goods to Gaza after all.

In conclusion
I’m not hoping to make anyone pro-Israeli with this posting, but the sordid fact that extreme groups such as Free Gaza, who strive on demagogic publications and half truths, are successful in using the public to propagate their causes using cheap blows to common sense and conscious just boggle my mind. There’s a plethora of human rights activists and organizations who aid Gazans in acceptable ways, in accordance to Israeli policy.
Without pointing a blaming finger on neither side, I’ll mention again that the Israeli-Palestine crisis is far too complex for the general public to fathom, and therefor it’s easy to buy it’s trust with such blunt actions, which obviously weren’t meant to aid anyone - but to stir a controversy and shed a negative light on Israel.
I do blame the public, for propagating without reason, and not even trying to see the other side, ignoring proper news sources and disregard the fact that 99% of the propagated “information” is posted to blogs which are openly affiliated with activist movements.

Was Israel right to intercept the boat? I cannot say. But the way the decision was carried out was nothing short of respectful to all parties.

Some sources (limited, because most major news sites didn’t even bother to address the issue):

Random stuff from the internet

June 25th, 2009 by shai

The end of a long week is finally in view, here are a few links to get you through the weekend:

Enjoy!

A new solution to the power crisis - building a new sun

June 24th, 2009 by shai

Do you think you can supply the entire earth’s energy demand with a modest amount of sea water?

The scientists behind the new generation of nuclear reactors, called JET, do.

While still in experimental stages, this ambituous solution to energy deficits seems to be ideal: it’s (relatively) cheap, environmentally economic and really really awesome.

I figure the basic idea was conceived when a nuclear physicists, probably an eccentric one, gazed into the sun (he was wearing UV screening safety goggles) and uttered to himself - “we should get on of those”.

The first obstacle to overcome was a petty logistics issue - where the on earth are you going to store a sun? It’s bigger than earth, you know, that would require some steep real estate budget. “No sweat,” said the JET crew, “we’ll just make it ten times hotter than the sun, and about 840 square meters should be enough for the reactor. We could even use a cattle ranch in England for the entire structure”.

And that’s, in a nutshell (and with some extent of creative freedom), the story of how the sun became the second hottest place in the solar system, second only to the English village of Culham, where ITER, the world’s first JET reactor plant, is currently being assembled.

Ten times hotter than the heart of the sun means “over 15 million C”, and that’s so hot that the inside of the core becomes invisible, as the energies it emits are in frequencies beyond the scope of human vision.

Now, I own a pair of thermal underpants, I’m aware of heat resistant substances. But I also know my nuclear physics, which tell me that 15 mil C is hot enough to rip electrons off atoms and fuse them together into a new kind of element (namely, plasma state of matter) - so what could they have possibly construct the reactor’s inner shell from?

The answer is simpler and cooler than one would expact - magnets. A magnetic field 100,000 times stronger than earth’s tames the beastly forces of plasma.

The JET reactor uses lasers to heat matter which is produced by filtering sea water, it than bombards the purified matter with two of the world’s largest laser cannons. According to their website, this construct can produce ten times the energy it takes up.

By the way, the guys behind the JET are so swell, they’ve put a lot of budget and effort minimizing the harm the construction might do to it’s immidiate environment. They’ve even brought Fauna expert to help them relocate endagered species of beetles, more about that in the website under ITER & the environment.

Watch the reactor in action:

Some loosely relevant links: