The human being has achieved an important scientific advance with the virtual creation of his first star in a laboratory. And it is that for the first time, researchers in this field have managed to produce a self-sufficient nuclear fusion, that is, it produces more energy from the fusion than was used to drive it.
This achievement, thus in its simplest summary, sounds like something almost crude and even like a logical goal to achieve. But in reality it represents a first and very important step towards the goal of creating inexhaustible, self-sustaining and clean energy systems.
Under such a premise, it could represent an advance that would finally move us away from this historical dependence that we have dragged on fossil fuels for centuries.
According to the journal of Los Angeles Timeson December 13, 2022, the United States Government confirmed that it had achieved nuclear fusion with a net energy gain.
The event would have happened specifically on December 5 of last year, when the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California managed to generate more energy than was spent.
Why is this achievement with self-sustaining nuclear fusion so important?
According to an article from Euro News Green, Jill Hruby, deputy secretary of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), described how the scientists behind this project directed 192 lasers aimed at a target the size of a baby goat, popcorn or popcorn.
It was a capsule with deuteron and triton that with the energy of the lasers reached 3 million degrees Celsius, thus generating a clean nuclear fusion and thus culminating more than 60 years of research to verify that this kind of process was possible.
In theory, nuclear fusion could be the key to achieving an inexhaustible and above all clean energy source. This net gain was relatively small, but he has also found that it is possible to achieve.
From this perspective, it represents a historic advance in this field, although everything is in a relatively embryonic stage. Therefore, it will be necessary to wait for the development of more powerful and detailed systems that manage to scale the gain obtained.
In principle, a nuclear fusion imitates the same generation process as the Sun, hence we talk about the human being having created his own star.
This original podcast from Spotify explains in detail and absolute clarity, in an interview with astronaut José Hernández, the relevance of this advance and what we can expect in the near future and the coming decades:
