4 ms·

> Alchemy and they realize the incredible power of mercury They were just a few centuries too early! https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/nuclear-fus

• nandomrumber 9mo ago
  The Alchemists were right, just not ambitious enough. If they’d’ve started with turning hydrogen in to gold they’d’ve had more success, and we’d be a space fairing species by now.
  • fooker 9mo ago
    Step 1: yeet mercury into a mini sun. If this actually works, I'm going to be convinced that some alchemist overheard an alien dude talking about this but misinterpreted it in line with contemporary knowledge.
    • ben_w 9mo ago
      It does work, but nobody really cares because of all the radiation involved. Here's a paper, but given the date I have no idea if it was written by humans or by AI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13461 https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13461
      • fooker 9mo ago
        Seems the radiation goes away in a decade or so, not a huge amount of time in the grand scheme of things. And I guess irradiated gold or a weird gold isotope would be just fine for putting in electronics that is meant to go beyond low earth orbit.
  • cindyllm 9mo ago
    [dead]
  • runlaszlorun 9mo ago
    It's not their fault, they didn't have lean startup and blitz scaling yet. </s>