A headline without calling it an "Artificial Sun"?!
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They say "artificial sun" because that's what it is though, there's no fusion reactions here they're just microwaving hydrogen to millions of degrees to study the kind of thing that would happen IF somebody runs a fusion reactor for 22 minutes.
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Someone once told me a sun is just a fusion nuclear pile reactor and... Like... I guess.
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That's about the energy output per volume of a 70 year old cyclist.
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Arguably, the nearby sun scale fusion reactor has been fairly useful for us. Nowadays we can convert its output directly into electricity using solar cells
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I never said it wasn't useful, just a very low efficiency reactor. Then again, if it was better, it would burn out faster, which would be bad for life on earth.
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Right, for the Americans here that hate metric.
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Cyclist-years is a unit that has served us well for generations
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What I'm hearing is that we should mine the sun and make better use of all that fuel.
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It produces about the same power per cubic metre as compost does, which is pretty crazy when you think about it.
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That's part of the reason a moon base could be viable. The sun outputs a reasonable amount of helium 3, which is great for fusion reactions. Unfortunately it tends to sit at the top of our atmosphere and get blown away again. On the moon, it gets captured by the dust in collectable quantities.
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Just make sure you do it at night.
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Sure, but it makes up for that by having an idiot proof design.
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