Ask HN: Diamond Anvil Cell Heater?

1 points by ohiovr ↗ HN
Take a frozen wafer of deuterium ice and compress it with diamond anvil cell to 771 GPA, then fire very focused laser beams to culminate in the middle between the walls of the cell with increasing power to initiate fusion.

Source of idea: red dwarf stars like Proxima Centauri have pressures of around 3500 GPA yet are big enough to sustain fusion. The fusion power is very small and already on a mass basis, fusion power in the sun is very very small. Fusion energy of course is very big. The fuel lasts a long time.

At any rate this might be able to give us an idea of the smallest possible star if it were made of pure deuterium.

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