what an incredible achievement. rome wasn't built in a day and real.science takes time and effort. so much effort by these scientists!
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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I'm so used to hearing that this technology is 10 years away, or whatever the old adage was, that i can't believe we've been seeing actual progress on this front in the last few years. Maybe it will actually happen eventually!
Well, there's been incremental progress all along. I remember reading about milliseconds being a big accomplishment at some point.
Also, it's pretty heavily dependent on the exact plasma in question. One hot enough to do lots of fusion will probably be different, so this isn't the finish line. Relevant XKCD.
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I'm noticing in these comments that the tech bros that want to solve climate change by magical technological advances instead of using what we have had an interesting effect: some people on the other side have grown tired of the real technological advances that would actually help.
Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave!
With a box of scraps!
We're not Tony Stark, sir.
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
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That is one technology that I don't care if China steals secrets to make it happen faster.
No need!
The data gathered by EAST will support the development of other reactors, both in China and internationally. China is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program, which involves dozens of countries, including the U.S., U.K. Japan, South Korea and Russia.
If we were a smarter society, we’d end our stupid cold war with them and cooperate.
If they were a more humane society, we likely would.
More humane like Nazi-America, or more humane like Warcrimes-Russia? Description unclear, please clarify.
More humane like the best of us wish to be and the majority of us never will be
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im pretty sure almost unilaterally, every country would like the solution to near infinite energy regardless. its extremely vital if as a species, ever want to start a colony outside of earth.
the only people against it would be those in the pocket of other forms of energy monetary wise.
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While neat, this is not self-sustaining
it's taking more energy to power it than you're getting out of it. (You can build a fusion device on your garage if you're so inclined, though obviously this is much neater than that!)
One viewpoint is that we'll never get clean energy from these devices, not because they won't work, but because you get a lot of neutrons out of these devices. And what do we do with neutrons? We either bash them into lead and heat stuff up (boring and not a lot of energy), or we use them to breed fissile material, which is a lot more energetically favorable. So basically, the economically sound thing to do is to use your fusion reactor to power your relatively conventional fission reactor. Which is still way better than fossil fuels IMHO, so that's something.
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Someone needs to bash these scicomm journalists over the head until they stop using the words "artificial sun"
Forget artificial suns, let me tell you right now how to make an artificial moon:
- Be a robot.
- Pull down pants.
- Bend over.
- Point robo-crack towards recipient
- Artificial Moon.
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