Wow. Last wednesday I woke up to a new world when the BBC and Gizmodo articles dropped.
Read all about it:
The definitive piece is by Quinn Norton – No Sleep ‘Til Fusion. This article is amazing – heartfelt and accurate. Quinn was there the night of the definitive fusion run. She even helped run the reactor. It was a night on the cusp. So exciting.
The same day Matthew Danzico from the BBC published Extreme DIY: Building a homemade nuclear reactor in NYC. This article took the story viral… it’s all over now!
CNN did a web writeup: Man builds web pages by day and nuclear fusion reactors by night.
CNN TV: Nuclear fusion the ‘Holy Grail’ of green energy?
CNN live interview.
My friend Olivia Koski was on this story from the start: Amateur Fusioneer Dreams of Clean Energy.
Discovery News: HOMEMADE NUCLEAR REACTOR BUILT IN NYC.
Gawker wins best of snark: The Gucci Employee Who Built a Nuclear Reactor in Brooklyn. “Artisanal nuclear fusion”. Pretty funny comments too.
Best comical artwork goes to racked.com: Gucci Web Developer Building a Nuclear Reactor in Brooklyn.
Most ridiculous headline goes to NYPOST: New Yorker found with nuclear reactor in Brooklyn warehouse. NYPOST also wins worst gross factual error: They state that I am building a fission reactor, which is incorrect… it’s fusion.
Worst comments go to Fox News: Gucci Designer Builds Nuclear Reactor in Brooklyn Warehouse.
We were covered by AOL, Yahoo! News, AP, France 5, Inside Edition, Huffington Post, Reddit, Digg, Hacker News, Slashdot, and a bazillion other outlets. I had reporters camping out at old apartments, calling my relatives, showing up at the lab. We got a visit from the NYFD and NYPD. Absolutely fucking nutz. The world went bonkers for this story.
Just as I planned…. mwahahahahaha!
Now everybody forget all about this so I can get back to work! ;)
Prometheus Fusion Perfection 
Congrats on the good press! :) Bringing positive attention to endeavors such as these is the best way of getting them off the ground.
However, anything “nuclear” is a touchy subject. Make sure you talk with the press entity’s fact checkers. The New York Post quotes, “Mark Suppes, a 32-year-old amateur physicist with a passion for sustainable energy, constructed the $40,000 homemade fission reactor in his spare time,” and continue to mention the fission process. The amateur scientific community ill needs negative attention due to misinterpretation and misinformation.
Keep up the good work! I subscribed to your blog the moment I found it online. Congratulations on becoming part of The Neutron Club and I look forward to future updates.
I contacted NYPOST for a correction.
NYPOST made the correction.
Not a technical fellow here, but in the Gizmodo write-up, I couldn’t help but notice the concerns about insulation:
“It’s the McDonalds problem. How do you keep the hot side hot and the cool side cool?” says Suppes “It’s going to have to be a multilevel cooling system… Multiple layers of vacuum mirrored insulation.
Just one thought that might or might not prove useful: in your considerations of materials science, have you given any thought to the properties and possible applications of aerogels here? http://www.aerogel.org/
Not sure whether that might be helpful (in budgetary terms or otherwise,) but thought I’d throw it out there.
It’s been a while since I checked in. You’ve been doing kick-ass work!
–David
Ha, epic. DIY fusion is at the intersection of sexy terror, more so than diybio for sure, and hence perfect material for news outlets. The challenge is to unspin the danger component and make it all domestic and a little conventional. Good luck!
Thankfully DIY bio can fly under the radar more easily. I’ll keep you guys updated when I start my project =)
So you’re telling me that my spent copper conflat gasket that I carry on my key ring is sorta famous too?! This is awesome. Congratulations. It’s been a pleasure to watch this project come together and even be a part of it through Kickstarter. Keep it up.
you carry that big ass gasket on your keyring?!
get back to work!!!