It won't. We as a field do accelerate protons by via another means, typically by hitting solids instead of gas jets like the article. And...would you know, we h

It won't. We as a field do accelerate protons by via another means, typically by hitting solids instead of gas jets like the article. And...would you know, we have done pB-fusion in this way :) [0] It's nowhere near efficient to be a "net energy gain" (in fact, I'm not sure it can be by just using the ion acceleration schemes we have), but these fusion experiments with lasers are useful as compact spallation sources. That to me is even more exciting because as others pointed, the lightest ion (proton) is 1836 times the weight of an electron meaning current ion accelerators and neutron sources are large facilities vs. electron accelerators which need not be so large (doctor xray for example). Minimizing those could be a game changer, even if the beam characteristics aren't that great yet or the efficiency is bad (which is the issue for laser acceleration in general). [0] https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.013204 https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.0...