maggotz said:

what if they're thousands of light years away? how could we communicate with them? (it's completely irrelevant. just a thought that came up. )

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in fact, the sun doesn't produce that much energy relative to its total size

in other words the only sustainable, energy positive fusion reaction that we know of doesn't radiate much energy at all

i think i read that a simple candle flame radiates many times more energy for it's size than the sun

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Total radiant power of the sun is 3.85*10^26 W. The radiant exitance of the sun is 63*10^6 W/m^2. And it has an impressive surface area.

We would need a, scaled down, sun with a radius of 22 km to provide all humans on earth with 2000 W. (not sure my quick calculations are correct ). That's a big object. We should do better.

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About 3.4×1038 protons (hydrogen nuclei) are converted into helium nuclei every second (out of ~8.9×1056 total amount of free protons in the Sun), releasing energy at the matter–energy conversion rate of 4.26 million tonnes per second, 383 yottawatts (3.83×1026 W) or 9.15×1010 megatons of TNT per second. This actually corresponds to a surprisingly low rate of energy production in the Sun's core—about 0.3 µW/cm³ (microwatts per cubic cm), or about 6 µW/kg of matter. For comparison, the human body produces heat at approximately the rate 1.2 W/kg, millions of times greater per unit mass.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun

maybe the matrix wasn't so far off?

adjust said:

i don't think we have a chance to do better than the sun until there is an energy crisis and a real motivation to develop fusion technology

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Our current fusion techniques already are far more efficient than those found in the core of the Sun because the temperatures are much higher and the plasma density greater.  By the logic used above, because the Sun produces far less energy relative to mass than a human so should a fusion bomb.  That, however, is not the case.  On a separate note, fossil fuels are not going to sustain the continued expansion and power-thirst of mankind for much longer.   

All information in my post is from a person with limited knowledge of nuclear fusion and I could be completely wrong.  But from my reading that seems to be correct.

By the way, check out this: http://www.iter.org/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITERand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO

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Why would anyone fuse anything above iron?

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If it sounds completely outlandish, assume you misunderstand
With fusing elements above iron I ofcourse meant the top side of lighter elements, not the lower side of heavier elements. This reading the Periodic Table in rows downward, starting with Hydrogen.

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you would think that with the universe being 13 billion years old or whatever, we would be seeing von-neuman probes and alien radio transmissions all over the place... but we don't

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lets look at the sun, a good example of a fusion reaction in progress

while it seems impressive (and it is responsible for almost all the energy available on our planet) the sun is a huge object. in fact, the sun doesn't produce that much energy relative to its total size

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