Symphony of particles

[jcoady]

http://www.iter.org/newsline/255/1490

[KitemanSA]

The conditions are ripe for fusion reactions, and a small Sun is created in the centre of the machine.

I've yet to see a "sun" in the shape of a torus.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Larry Niven created the Ringworld, why not a Ringsun?

[KitemanSA]

Umm... fiction?

[paperburn1]

Umm... fiction?

The math/ physics behind ringworld is sound. All you would have needed it time, energy, and materials.

[KitemanSA]

Show me the math and physics behind a gravity confined toroidal star.

[hanelyp]

I can envision a rapidly spinning ring, the spin matching self gravity. But I'm not sure how stable that would be. I suspect not stable.

[DeltaV]

There is a natural tendency for orbiting particles to gather in a plane (disk), e.g., rings of saturn, stellar accretion disks, galaxies, pizza dough.

Conservation of angular momentum.

[D Tibbets]

A fusion producing ring or torus seems reasonable under exotic conditions in the cosmos. An example might be an accretion disk around a neutron star or black hole, the spiraling plasma can certainly get hot enough, and the density in the inner portions of the accretion disk may be dense enough that significant fusion of light elements occurs.

But, this is indeed exotic conditions and represents very intense conditions. And it is still gravity mediated (?though magnetic fields generated by the spinning disk/ torus would be huge).

For that matter, some insist that fusion occurs in the Sun's Corona where high temperatures are generated by magnetic effects. While conditions do exist where fusion could occur, the amount is a very, very tiny fraction of the core fusion production. Despite the huge volume of the corona compared to the solar core the average temperature is only ~ 10% of the core and the density is billions of times less. And gravity is what still holds it together, at least tenuously.

Dan Tibbets