this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
208 points (90.6% liked)

Science Memes

9177 readers
3219 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.


Sister Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago (13 children)

Wait, but fusion is working. They're seeing net positive output. It's still quite small at the moment, but moderate gains continue to be made in the field.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This isn’t properly calculated though. They only count the actual laser energy inside the reacttvs output. They don’t account for the huge amount of energy thatch’s needed to run the lasers in the first place or the rest of the facility. It’s nowhere near putting out more energy than it consumes and it’s also a reactor for nuclear weapons testing so they don’t really try to produce energy anyway.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

You're not wrong. It's still an important step for the field though. Having a net positive within the reaction itself could theoretically mean eventually the energy from the reaction can help sustain the reaction after the initial higher activation energy. But with the poor state of science journalism the result was reported with extreme hyperbole.

load more comments (11 replies)