Ars OpenForum

This is a very bad, shallow, clickbait article that reads more like a a press release. It is missing the absolute most important aspect of this this experiment, which is that it was specifically NOT energy positive, despite how it is being reported. It's a bit like saying that turning the key of your car is produces more energy than it consumes. You turn the key to your car, and suddenly you have a bunch of energy from the motor, and therefore, cars produce energy at the cost of only a key turn! Infinite power! Of course, that utterly ignores fact that you need to pump a bunch of oil out the ground, transport it to the car, fill the car, and then burn that gas. Turning your key does not produce energy. You turned a key that started burning a bunch of fuel "produced" net negative energy.

This is what happened with the fusion experiment. The calculated the raw amount of energy the laser theoretically imparted into the reaction, and that was smaller than the amount they got out, just like turning a key "produces" energy at only the cost of a few of your muscles moving. In the case of this experiment, they ignored the literal energy it took to power the laser and the power it took to run the fusion system. They ONLY counted the exact amount of energy the laser imparted in that moment. It also ignores the fact that they couldn't extract any of the energy for useful work, and that this system can't run continuously.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great experiment taking a step forward, but it was a small step and not getting us anywhere near real fusion power.