A Star is Born
2012-02-17 23:52:15.604524+01 by petronius 0 comments
The latest issue of Popular Science has a fascinating story about a 14 year-old genius from Arkansas who became the 32nd person in history to achieve nuclear fusion, using some cobbled together lab equipment and advice from a bunch of impressed technical mentors.
The piece also has a few asides about David Hahn, the Nuclear Boyscout. In the early 90s he attempted to build a breeder reactor in his Michigan barn, without the knowlege of his parents or anybody else, like the Nuclear Regulatory Agency. While he was trying to dismantle the pile the cops found out about it, and triggered a Nuclear Reaction Team scramble which declared the property a Superfund site and carted everything to a dump site in Utah. It seems that Tyler, the Current whiz kid, has a tremendously (perhaps insanely) supportive family and they have gotten him into a genius educational program in Reno. Hahn is apparently far less socially fluent, and never got the support may have needed. Since the reactor incident he did a stint in the Navy and in 2007 he was arrested for stealing smoke detectors, presumably to acquire the Americium isotopes inside. A bit of "there but for fortune..." in action.