Comment by fooker
16 hours ago
> at the core of a star - which is powered by gravity
That is what I meant, I doubt we really understand what 'powered by gravity' means. You could win a Nobel prize or two by discovering all the details involved here. You would also win a Nobel prize by definitively proving that nothing special happens, you just have high temperatures and high pressures.
The way we are trying to study fusion is like rubbing larger and larger rocks to produce more fire.
The processes involved in solar fusion have been well understood since the 1930s [1,2]. Hans Bethe won a Nobel Prize for this in 1967. The problem is that one cannot produce stellar densities and pressures in any kind of apparatus.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNO_cycle
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton%E2%80%93proton_chain
We have an extremely good understanding of how gravity operates, both inside and outside of stars. There are no Nobel prizes waiting for things you describe, because that’s all well-established and settled science.
Quantum physics tells us exactly why high temperatures and pressures are needed, and predicts numerically what values are needed. We have a great deal of confidence in its correctness, especially because classical physics predicted values that were far too high - it’s only with quantum tunneling that we get values that match observations.
> The way we are trying to study fusion is like rubbing larger and larger rocks to produce more fire.
This is an incorrect opinion borne of ignorance of the very well-understood physics involved.