Nearly a dozen years ago I wrote an article for  The Huffington Pos t on  Star Power for Humanit y.  The latest June issue of  Scientific American  featured  Star Power: What is the future of fusion energy?   You can click on that link for the full article.  I'll summarize: This past December, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ( LLNR ) claimed a breakthrough in attaining net positive with their laser fusion system.  No one had ever done that before. As an aside, I worked there in the 1970's on that project, and left because I could not envision the laser that would accomplish this task.  Can you believe that was around half a century ago? The bad news is that net positive is a long way from commercialization.  And certainly, that intriguing ultimate laser has not yet been invented. Well anyway, this article was written by Philip Ball, a British science writer who is my same age.  He has a PhD in physics from Bristol University.  Easy to read  Sci Am  article with no eq

Scientists have been speculating on an even lighter element than Hydrogen .  Will this revolutionize chemistry? How can this be?  Hydrogen has just one proton and one electron. Well, Muonium also has an electron.... BUT NO PROTON .  There is an antimuon inside, which is lighter than a proton. The reason why you don't see Muonium in the Table of Elements is that it is not an element, for it is energetically impossible for this antimuon to transform into a proton. Thus the answer to the title above is NO. Might also mention Positronium, to be defined next. Some background. Back to hydrogen, its simplest isotope deuterium has one electron, one proton and one neutron, while tritium has one electron, one proton and two neutrons.   Sorry to keep bringing up these terms, but hydrogen is also known as protium There are 90 naturally-occurring elements on Earth, plus 18 or so other artificial ones. Muonium is artificial. Has one electron.  No proton or neutron. The nucleus is an antimuon, wh