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Originally Posted by HBrutusH
[science] Couldn't they just crack the petrolium polymers into shorter monomers to increase the amount of fuel they gain from it? Or would that just mean that cars would burn more fuel to achieve the same affect?[/science]
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You can't beat thermodynamics. You aren't getting any extra energy by breaking it down so you are going to make a net loss in the process. This is doubly so since shorter hydrocarbons can't be converted to energy as efficiently as longer hydrocarbons (lower Carnot efficiency since they have lower flash points).
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Actually, on the subject of fusion: I saw a tv program which showed a prototype fusion reactor (being developed in some Mid-England university) which actually works. The only problem is that it uses more power to start the fusion prossess (re:big magnets) than it actually gains from it. Still, might not be long until we get fusion powered space ships, at least.
Actually, making corpses into oil isn't such a bad idea.
here's a pretty (and real) picture of a fusion reactor. the cut out view is through an infra red lense while the reactor is running. (for the few seconds it can before it fuses)
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That's a tokamak reactor; the problem with the tokamak is it was really the first design that 'could' work, by which I mean it wasn't obviously flawed to the point where it could be dismissed without even construction of a prototype. Yet somehow the realm of high-energy plasma fusion has remained obsessed with this single, original design, and it has soaked up almost all the research dollars available for the past 30 years. To paraphrase some physicist... we've spent billions of dollars and 30 years researching tokamaks and all we've learned is they don't work. The design originally came from a soviet physicist and some have jokingly suggested that the Russians giving it to the west was actually industrial sabotage. The universe is full of fusion reactors and none of them look like the tokamak.
The design that excites me is the Polywell reactor, which is the reactor the US military has been quietly funding research into for the past decade.