Natural Science Forum / Physics / Fusion / June 2008

Hi,

Through web-surfing I've found out about amazing substances called
aerogels that the wikipedia article descibes as a "low-density solid-
state material derived from gel in which the liquid component of the
gel has been replaced with gas".

I was wondering if one could compress a deuterium-tritium gas mixture
into these cage like structures so that one could reach a high density
of gas molecules at relatively low pressure.

If one could reach a density of gas of 10^4 g/cc then one would have a
D/T mixture that could sustain a "fusion chain reaction" on ignition
by a beam of deuterons as described in the following paper:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1958PhRv..111..900G

What do you think?

John