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A Lab in America Almost Outshone the Sun
Scientists finally came to close to achieving a real breakthrough in nuclear technology.
For the briefest of moments, the experiment outshone every power station in the world — combined. It reached, almost unbelievably, a peak output of ten quadrillion watts. Yet brief it indeed was, for less than one billionth of a second later it was all over, nothing more than a rapidly cooling surge of energy.
Nevertheless, the experiment has been hailed as a milestone on the road to successful nuclear fusion. Some went so far as to label it an “historic breakthrough”, one which ushers in a new age of clean and limitless energy. Those claims should be treated carefully. Fusion is still decades from any practical implementation.
The experiment in question took place at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and involved a device known as the National Ignition Facility. This is, essentially, a massive laser, one of the most powerful on Earth. Researchers focus that laser on a tiny pellet of hydrogen fuel, and then emit an intense beam of light.
That flash of light lasts mere fractions of a second, but it is powerful enough to utterly destroy the pellet. The surface layers rapidly heat and then explode, placing an immense pressure on the layers below…
