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When Wilbur and Orville discovered flight, we all thought flying was impossible. Then, when they proved it was possible, everyone ignored it for a while, thinki

When Wilbur and Orville discovered flight, we all thought flying was impossible. Then, when they proved it was possible, everyone ignored it for a while, thinking that freight airplanes or passenger planes could never happen. And then it changed the world. This discovery is HUGE because we can now have the potential to create as much energy as we need. But it will take time for it to change the world. But it is an enormous discovery that most are just beginning to understand.

WJW 4y ago
Everyone already knew fusion was possible, after all it happens everyday in the sun and we know how to make fusion bombs. For a fun science project you can even make https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor at home and get started fusing atoms right in the comfort of your home. The NIF news is a good step, but it is quite far from a working fusion reactor. For one, it is a single shot reaction after which significant recharge time is required; it is not a steady state reaction. Secondly, it may have been energy positive when measuring energy released vs laser energy in, but you cannot charge (these kind of) lasers with heat. The electrical energy required to pump the lasers was much much bigger than the energy released. Converting the heat energy to electricity would run into all sorts of efficiency losses as well, most notably the Carnot efficiency which states that for any set of practical temperatures (ie with a reasonable cooling source like a river and with a turbine operating temperature that doesn't melt the turbine blades) the efficiency won't be all that much higher than 60% or so. BTW, it made front page on all of the news publications I regularly follow so I don't see this as being ignored so much as that it is merely one item in a huge stream of other important news.

WJW 4y ago

Everyone already knew fusion was possible, after all it happens everyday in the sun and we know how to make fusion bombs. For a fun science project you can even make https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor at home and get started fusing atoms right in the comfort of your home. The NIF news is a good step, but it is quite far from a working fusion reactor. For one, it is a single shot reaction after which significant recharge time is required; it is not a steady state reaction. Secondly, it may have been energy positive when measuring energy released vs laser energy in, but you cannot charge (these kind of) lasers with heat. The electrical energy required to pump the lasers was much much bigger than the energy released. Converting the heat energy to electricity would run into all sorts of efficiency losses as well, most notably the Carnot efficiency which states that for any set of practical temperatures (ie with a reasonable cooling source like a river and with a turbine operating temperature that doesn't melt the turbine blades) the efficiency won't be all that much higher than 60% or so. BTW, it made front page on all of the news publications I regularly follow so I don't see this as being ignored so much as that it is merely one item in a huge stream of other important news.