This is a profound moment, writes Kenneth Chang, as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in less than 100 trillionths of a second received more energy than they put in thereby having achieved nuclear fusion. But Is This The ‘Kitty Hawk Moment’ For Fusion Energy? Charles Seife at The Atlantic urges everyone to curb their enthusiasm as scientists in the past have jiggered their numbers to give the appearance of fusion in order to ensure a steady flow of money for research. And at the very best, scientists merely proved something we’ve known all along but couch their findings as a miracle. We urge anomalists to read Breanna Bishop’s press release concerning how the National Ignition Facility Achieves Fusion Ignition and ask a neutral scientist or physicist, not a woo-woo nutjob or someone who reckons nuclear fusion is too “woke”, for their perspective. In the interim we’ll hear out Marco de Baar, director of the Dutch Institute for Energy Research (DIFFER), who cautions one to Take Claims Of Nuclear Fusion Breakthroughs With A Grain Of Salt or at least a bb-sized pellet of deuterium and tritum as nuclear fusion isn’t cut-and-dried as mainstream journalists would like to believe. Read on for many other complications in truly detecting fusion going beyond merely detecting more energy than a laboratory put into it. (CS)
— Delivered by Feed43 service