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Dennis Whyte

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
1833 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And that's the thing.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Yeah, and people have looked at that, but even like something like quantum tunneling has a limit as to what it can actually do.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So there are people who are genuine, you know, that really want to see it make, but, you know, sort of goes to the extraordinary, I mean, we know fusion happens at these high energies, like we know this extremely accurately, and I can show you a plot that shows that as you go to lower and lower energy, it basically becomes immeasurable.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So, if you're going down this other pathway, it means there's really a very different physical mechanism involved.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

All I would say is that I actually poke in my head once in a while to see what's going on in that area.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And as scientists, we should always try to make ourselves open.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

But in this one, it's like, but show me something that I can measure and that is repeatable, and then it's going to take more extraordinary effort.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And to date, this has not met that threshold, in my opinion.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Yeah.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Well, let me tell you a story about this.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Yes.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Okay.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

It's a real story.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

So, there were really, really clever scientists in the end of the late 1800s in the world.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

You talk about, like, James Clerk Maxwell, and you talk about Lord Kelvin, and you talk about Lorenz, actually, who named after these other ones, and

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

On and on and on.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And like Faraday, and they discovered electromagnetism.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

Holy cow.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And it's like, they figure out all these things.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#353 โ€“ Dennis Whyte: Nuclear Fusion and the Future of Energy

And yet there were these weird things going on that you couldn't quite figure out.