Sorry bro I was referencing an old article about watching a star form with th ALMA telescope from 10,000 light years. The sun is much closer for studying.
Being we can split an atom I wonder how long it is before we can form a small star (something the size of a quarter)?
They have made progress in generating energy via nuclear fusion. Traditional nuclear power plants generate energy via nuclear fission or splitting of atoms. The sun fuses hydrogen into helium via nuclear fusion. Amazing stuff. Nuclear fusion would change the world.
https://www.dw.com/en/scientists-make-breakthrough-with-nuclear-fusion-record/a-60720511#:~:text=European%20researchers%20have%20leaped%20closer%20to%20making%20nuclear,mix%20was%20heated%20to%20set%20the%20latest%20recordScientists make breakthrough with nuclear fusion recordEuropean researchers have leaped closer to making nuclear fusion a practical energy source for humanity. It's the same power-generating process that makes stars, including our own sun, shine.
The donut-shaped tokamak in Culham, England, where the plasma mix was heated to set the latest record
Scientists announced progress on Wednesday in the mission to make nuclear fusion a safe, practical, and clean energy source smashing the record for the amount of nuclear fusion energy produced.
The experiment at the Joint European Torus (JET) facility near Oxford, England, set a record of generating 59 megajoules of sustained fusion energy in a five-second period well over double the previous amount.
What is nuclear fusion?The fusion process is a reverse of what happens in existing nuclear power plants nuclear fission where energy is released when large atoms are broken down into smaller ones.
Nuclear fusion comes from bashing together two small atomic nuclei at such high temperatures that they fuse and release energy.
The nuclei would normally repel one another, so unimaginably high temperatures are needed to make them move quickly enough to actually collide.
It's the same basic process that sees hydrogen in the sun converted into helium, generating sunlight and making life on Earth possible.
Fusion offers the prospect of climate-friendly, abundant energy without pollution, radioactive waste.
What did the scientists do?In the experiment, the scientists heated tiny amounts of deuterium and tritium two forms of hydrogen gas to temperatures 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.
The superheated plasma can't be held in a normal container, which would be destroyed by it. Instead, it's kept in place by powerful magnets inside a donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak.
There, as it spins around and fuses, the plasma releases enormous amounts of heat as nuclear material is converted into energy.
A tweet from the UK Atomic Energy Authority showed the record pulse of energy as it happened.
While that sounds slightly terrifying, the process is fundamentally safe in that because it is so difficult to start and keep going it cannot start a runaway process.
In terms of fuel, deuterium can be found in seawater, and tritium can be produced from lithium as a byproduct of the whole process.
Per kilogram of material used, the process releases nearly four million times more energy than burning fossil fuel, with unreactive helium the only waste product.
