The scientific community is frying! U.S. scientists announced a breakthrough in nuclear fusion
Do you think fuel cells and solar panels are already the ultimate solution for clean energy? No, our dreams of greatness never stop. Mankind has been pursuing the purest, most efficient, and ultimate "holy grail" - nuclear fusion energy! And not long ago, a piece of news from the United States may make this unattainable dream a reality!
Burn the energy of the earth, burn the power of the stars!
On February 12, the world's authoritative scientific journal Science magazine released a paper. A team of scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States has announced that they have made a major breakthrough in controlled nuclear fusion experiments!
What is Nuclear Fusion? To put it simply, it is the process of fusing two light element nuclear fuels into one heavy element nucleus, releasing a huge amount of energy. The energy released comes from the gravitational pull that compresses the Coulomb repulsion of the nucleon into the nuclear force, and the energy density is greater than any known energy source!
Don't forget, this is the source of absolute energy that ignites the inner cores of the stars and powers the expansion of the universe! If this process can indeed be artificially replicated on Earth, it will undoubtedly open a new era full of infinite hope!
Unfortunately, although the idea of using a laser beam to heat fuel to trillions of degrees Celsius to trigger nuclear fusion was proposed as early as the 50s of the 20th century, it was a prohibitive scientific nightmare to truly control this wild force and continue to extract energy from it.
Until now, scientists in the United States have finally reached the final step——— allowing the fuel balls to release more energy than they put in when heated to extreme temperatures, thus driving the chain reaction to self-sustain. This breakthrough is considered the most critical step towards controlled fusion energy!
Breaking the spell requires more effort
Of course, while this is undoubtedly a major breakthrough in fusion research, it is still a long way from achieving commercial application.
Current experiments can only maintain an energy gain of single digits, picogram-seconds, which is as much as three orders of magnitude different from the gain required for conventional power plants. Second, in order to build a commercial fusion reactor that operates reliably, in addition to breakthroughs in temperature, pressure, vacuum and other aspects, engineering problems such as material damage and radiation shielding also need to be solved one by one.
In addition, due to the high cost of experimental equipment, this breakthrough experiment alone cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and the future investment in R&D and factory construction may be even more astronomical.
The good news, however, is that history has proven that anything seemingly impossible will eventually be overcome if scientists are brave enough to step into the unknown! Today's breakthrough in nuclear fusion shows that humanity's determination to conquer this extreme energy source is unshakable.
With the joint participation of many scientific research forces and the joint investment of global resources, nuclear fusion power plants will be truly launched in the near future, fundamentally solving our dependence on fossil fuels and radioactive waste, and opening a truly green, environmentally friendly and sustainable energy era!
The greatest scene in the energy history of human civilization
Once commercialized, fusion energy will undoubtedly completely subvert our perception of energy and open a new era of human energy development.
The fuel resources it uses are renewable and abundant reserves of deuterium and tritium, which almost means an inexhaustible energy supply.
The fusion process produces virtually no radioactive waste, making it a truly "zero-emission" clean energy with minimal environmental impact.
In addition, the energy released by nuclear fusion reactions will be thousands of times that of current commercial nuclear energy, and the energy density is high enough to meet the infinite expansion needs of human civilization.
Once this stellar internal combustion mechanism is successfully developed, it will also drive the in-depth innovation of the entire energy industry chain, and more advanced technologies such as energy storage, transmission and distribution, and utilization will emerge to help the transformation of energy to distributed and intelligent.
When infinite clean energy comes out, we will be one step closer to shouldering the responsibility of "cosmic civilization"! At that time, the imagination that was once narrowly confined to the earth by fossil fuels and thermonuclear reactions will burst into full bloom.
For example, roaming outer space, cryo-sleeping, bionic robots, antimatter energy, all these sci-fi plots may still be difficult to achieve today, but the future is just around the corner.
The light of sustainability has dawned, looking forward to a miracle!
What will the future hold? Maybe we can never imagine it, or maybe we start a voyage of reimagining it today. But in any case, human beings' obsession and dreams of energy have never stopped, and they have only done so today, because tomorrow is more worthy of expectations!
A new era known as the "artificial sun" is coming to us, illuminating the infinite light on the road to green civilization!