Engineers with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California could have taken us to the threshold of taking advantage of the internal process of a star to be able to feed our world by extracting an explosion of record of 10 quatrillions of energy from a hydrogen core. Size of a BB.
Nuclear fusion is the process of merging two hydrogen atoms together so that they form a helium atom and, in the process, release a huge amount of Pent Up energy. It is the same process that our Sun feeds and all other main sequences, starring the universe and is something of a Holy Grail for energy research.
It has a greater energy potential than nuclear fission, which enhance modern nuclear reactors, and given that the only byproduct of nuclear fusion is helium, is the definitive source of clean energy.
And, as it only uses a small amount of hydrogen for fuel, hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it is essentially a more powerful energy source than modern nuclear energy with an unlimited fuel supply and without toxic byproduct. Best of all, nuclear fusion reactions can be self-sufficient, which requires only a spark to start before the reaction continues to keep it without fuel.
It is this last critical element of the nuclear fusion reactors that LLNL engineers in the National Installation of Ignition (NIF) say that it is now within reach. According to a statement announced the results, “the experiment was enabled by focusing the NIF laser light, the size of the three soccer fields, a goal of the size of a BB that produces a hot spot the diameter of a hair human, generating more. of 10 fusion power cords for 100 trillion a second “.
While that might not sound like a long time, you do not need to be. You only need to achieve a threshold for the ignition of the merger so that the self-sufficient fusion process begins and runs on its own, providing an unprecedented artificial power source.
This is not the first time that LLNL scientists produced a fusion reaction, but this experiment produced eight times more energy release than the previous registration configuration experiment earlier this year and an increase of 25 times during its 2018 record .
Analysis: Is nuclear fusion controlled by man will be a reality in less than a decade?
Scientists have been dreaming of nuclear fusion for so long and without much success that it is natural to be skeptical of the LLNL report, which has not yet been reviewed by peers. Their findings would have to be duplicated and confirmed before we can leave us too excited, but like the LiveScience notes, even critics of LLNL’s research are surprised and even encouraged by the results.
The LLNL team produced an energy equivalent in which 100 billion of a second as 10% of energy in all the sunlight hitting the Earth at any given time. The amount of energy required to activate the reaction in the hydrogen pellet was immense, but the pellet absorbed around 70%.
This puts researchers within a strike distance from the ignition of the merger, where the same pellet releases more than 100% of the energy that absorbs and continues merging hydrogen and releases its energy even after the supply laser is removed from Energy.
Given the speed with which this approach is advancing, it is not unthinkable that this 100% melting ignition threshold can be crossed before the decade comes out. If that happens, some could consider it the most monumental discovery of human history.
