4 ms·
Reminds me the state of nuclear fusion.
by trollbridge 7mo ago
Reminds me the state of nuclear fusion.
- blitzar 7mo agoJust a decade away now.
- mrroper 7mo agoSo just like AI?
- ashirviskas 7mo agoNah, it's a decade away from *now*.
- blitzar 7mo agonahhh, definately from *now* though - 100% this time
- dwd 7mo agoNow now or Just now? * I've worked with too many Sth Africans.
- HenryMulligan 7mo agoFor those of us who aren't familiar, what is the difference?
- taskforcegemini 7mo agomost of them live in a different time zone
- dwd 7mo agoThe difference is how soon it might occur, except "now" can also mean they never get around to it. "Right now" is probably the only one that literally means now as the rest of the English-speaking world would assume.
- api 7mo ago… and like fusion it will be a decade away, a decade away, a decade away, six months away, then we have it. The “decade away” phenomenon comes from the fact that it’s basically impossible to time estimate innovation.
- gerdesj 7mo agoI went to school in Oxfordshire in the '80s. Some visiting profs from JET joked that fusion was 25 years away then.
- cbg0 7mo agoBack then things were centered around "can we even do this?" and now it's more of "how do we keep this running more than 5 minutes?".
- gerdesj 7mo agoMy impression back then from those profs was that it (fusion) would be inevitable but you do have to think long term, really long term. I'm old enough now (55) to understand that mentality. I'd put money on something useful fusion related happening within the next 10 years or perhaps 20. I'm not up on the current state of experiments etc but it will happen. AGI? - lol!
- api 7mo agoAFAIK superconductors are a major limiting tech. But we are slowly getting better ones, both by discovering more and by learning to mass produce superconducting wire. With superconductors you can make magnetic bottles. There’s also some interesting inertial confinement work happening. There the limiter is both confinement and the efficiency of the driver. Look up MagLIF for a hybrid magnetic inertial approach under study.
- meltyness 7mo ago... and room temperature superconductors! If only we could sort out the feasibility, interdependencies, and priorities, but we just don't know, or well, I just don't know haha.
- adrianN 7mo agoFusion is a number of dollars away, not years. It gets almost no funding because it’sa science and engineering experiment that most likely will not lead to economically viable power plants in a market dominated by renewables.
- femto 7mo agoThat's progress, if fusion is always only 10 years away now! The running joke used to be that it was always 30 years away.
- michaelcampbell 7mo agoThat's String Theory providing "answers", no?
- pseudohadamard 7mo agoThey should ask Iran to do it, they're only a month away all the time.