I would like to mention this ring of plasma is visible only under a microscope.
- Sure, just not very quickly. It will likely come in the form of antennae (tuned to 1/4 of the resonant frequency, likely around 900MHz or 1800Mhz based on the static experienced by the researchers) and energy harvesting IC. Would need more details to be sure.
- This is a very strange question. Are you asking if it could provide a potential difference(voltage) to allow a flow of electrons (current) ? If so, yeah, probably. Would need more details, like above, to be sure. We're probably talking about several mW of power.
- Categorically, no. Even if we found out Eisenstein was wrong and quantum theory is blown apart, thermodynamics will be solid, and thermo says this will not happen.
This is likely to be an awful way to produce/store/transmit energy, but definitely cool.
> Categorically, no. Even if we found out
> Eisenstein was wrong and quantum theory is
> blown apart, thermodynamics will be
> solid, and thermo says this will not happen.
Well, unless you can use a plasma like this to do nuclear fusion, in which case you will burn matter to generate energy.
I would argue the energy was always there -- it is the mass-energy equivalence, after all. I should probably clarify my point: energy must come from somewhere; energy is not spontaneously created.
Also, I don't even think anyone has broken even yet. ITER is supposed to, but we'll see.
> Also, I don't even think anyone has broken
> even yet. ITER is supposed to, but we'll
> see.
Yeah, no one has managed to harness more energy out of a plasma than put in to make it yet, but technically if it’s doing fusion at all, there’s more energy created though with current technology most of it just goes out into the universe as entropy that’s not harnessed.
Unless of course, as other posters mentioned, you consider the energy as present in the matter in the first place, which is a reasonable way to model it too.
It didn't. All of the energy was there, it just happened to be located in one place. Now all that energy is spread all over the place but it's still the same amount of energy.
Hn, I don't think this guy should be downvoted for asking critical thinking questions. We're here to learn, so be kind, and engage.
1) I don't see a way this could be done directly
2) Maybe? If the plasma was radiating RF energy in a certain band you could maybe make an resonantly coupled antenna and recover some energy.
3) Definitely not. Nuclear fusion is not happening here, merely moving so some into a super excited state causing them to radiate photons of a multitude of frequencies and produce heat.
A stream of charged particles of ions and electrons.
* Can this be used to charge a battery?
* Or feed in electrons into a DC power system?
* Can something like this output more energy than it takes in?