mark@unicorn.com writes:
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky [sentience@pobox.com] wrote:
> >Now _this_ is something I dealt with last time. If you take a lot of
> >lasers, maybe (for nanotech) a solid sphere-surface of hyperefficient
> >quantum-well lasers, all pointing inward, you can zap a pellet of
> >deuterium ond it will fuse. The last time I suggested it on the group,
> >someone else wrote back that I'd disclosed something he was going to patent.
>
> Does Usenet count for 'prior art'? There was a discussion of this idea
> there a few years ago... either rec.arts.sf.science or one of the nanotech
> groups, I think. I remember it because I was going to steal the idea to use
> in a short story, but never got around to writing more than an outline.
Does this approach really work for nanoscale pellets? I have the impression that the wavelength of the laser light ought to be much shorter than the size of the pellet. Also, deviations from spherical symmetry will likely cause more trouble as you shrink the system and get lots of diffraction oddities.
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