• How many protons and nuclei did they have to fling to get one to hit?
• How much Boron-11 is there accessible on the planet?
• How much energy is released, relative to energy required isolate Boron-11, turn it to plasma and generate a proton stream? (Not in this setup, but could this ever be used for energy production?)
• Are there other isotopes to which this proton bombardment technique could apply?
2) There seems to be a fair but not infinite amount: http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/5/boron. One site listed $500 per 100g.
3) It doesn't seem that such a calculation is readily available. However, now that the physics has been demonstrated, one can start to entertain such questions. Also, we are continually improving the efficiency of our laser sources, so as those improve the energy cost for this setup decreases.
4) Also from the publication: "Although our results are specific to the p11B case, a similar approach could be used to study the reaction of other light isotopes."
Bonus: Actual publication link (I'm not sure if the link is paywalled): http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131008/ncomms3506/full/nco...
3) Yes! You can use this for energy. In fact see my other post - I believe this is the future of fusion. The Boron doesn't need to be a plasma, so you don't need to confine it. You just leave it as a solid and hit it with protons.
4) You can also use Lithium (both isotopes) and Nitrogen (the rare 15 one).
I don't know how much energy is required to isolate Boron-11, but certainly it'd be a lot less than that. Since it's a light element it'll be relatively easy to centrifuge.
Energy output vs energy input in the reactor itself is always the big challenge for fusion. This experiment put more energy in than they got out, just like all other fusion experiments so far.
However, previous papers on boron fusion using petawatt picosecond lasers have estimated a 10,000x energy gain, once we have sufficiently powerful lasers (about an order of magnitude better than we have currently). See the references section here: http://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestI...
It is a low-abundance element in both the solar system and the Earth's crust.
Somebody should invest a lot of money and time into finding synthetic Boron, because I really believe into this technology. Without synthetic Boron, it's a waste of very rare resources that we have on our earth crust.
Side note: Interestingly there was even a "reference" to Boron known as Boronite in Star Trek that could be synthesized into one Omega Molecule that looked like a Fullerene [2]. The Omega molecule was known to be the most powerful substance known to exist.
--