Earlier today it was announced that scientists Peter Higgs and Francois Englert were being honored with the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on the theory of the Higgs Boson, the elusive God particle that might be what gives particles their mass. Sure, their work is impressive and deserves to be honored but it shouldn’t be the news story that captures the headlines. Rather, the lead science story today should be the fact that a massive breakthrough was just reached at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California that could lead to sustainable nuclear fusion power. Translation: we may finally, after decades of research, be getting closer to doing what some said would be impossible – producing cheap and unlimited energy!!!
The roadblock towards achieving this breakthrough has always been the fact that fusion power plants have consumed more energy than they have created. However, according to the BBC the pendulum may finally swung in the scientist’s favor recently when, “during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel – the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.”
The article added that, “This is a step short of the lab’s stated goal of “ignition”, where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. This is because known “inefficiencies” in different parts of the system mean not all the energy supplied through the laser is delivered to the fuel. But the latest achievement has been described as the single most meaningful step for fusion in recent years, and demonstrates NIF is well on its way towards the coveted target of ignition and self-sustaining fusion.”
In short, this means that they are not out of the woods yet and that there is still a lot of work that remains to be done. However, the fact that they have made it this far is still very impressive nonetheless. And when you compare it to the fact that my most impressive achievement of the last three decades was rescuing the Princess every time she got kidnapped in Super Mario Brothers, it appears to stand out even more. Hopefully, the scientists at the NIF can continue to build off of this discovery and achieve even more breakthroughs that will one day win them a Noble prize of their own. In the meantime, I’ll continue to earn achievements in my own special way.
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