As soon as scientists understood the process, they were obsessed with replicating it. Suddenly, it might be possible to harness the power of the Sun. What does that mean for humans on Earth…?
By David Sussin
In one second, the Sun releases more energy than humans have used in all of history.
The more we learn about our home star, the more impressive it becomes. The facts are mind blowing: its intense heat reaches us from 93 million miles away; it's not just bigger than the Earth, it's 109 times bigger; its core temperature is an unfathomable 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.
But the central, compelling fact is that some natural engine inside its core creates more energy than we'd ever need, every single second.
Hard to even comprehend that. It's no wonder humans since the dawn of time have looked up at that ball of never-ending fire and wondered, "what if we could harness its power somehow?"
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Of course, it's one thing to wonder. But British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington actually proposed it. He was addressing the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1920. By that time, we knew the Sun was mostly hydrogen.
Eddington posited that the Sun's power came from subatomic energy. Specifically, his theory was, the Sun compressed hydrogen under intense pressure, making it so hot it formed helium, releasing vast amounts of energy in the process.
Then he said the crazy thing out loud: he suggested humans could replicate this for our own use. According to Eddington, "we sometimes dream that man will one day learn how to release and control this subatomic energy. If he does, a star will no longer seem as unapproachable as it does now."
Eddington didn't know it at the time, but he was describing nuclear fusion. It wasn't until 1938 that scientists worked out all the math, and realized the process Eddington described would actually work. They nailed down two chemical processes -- the CNO cycle or carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle, and the proton-proton chain -- by which stars generate energy by converting hydrogen into helium.
The research paper explaining all this was published in 1944 -- sadly, the same year Eddington passed away. He didn't live to see that he was exactly right, decades before science caught up to his idea.
Of course, as soon as scientists understood the process, they were obsessed with replicating it. Suddenly, it might be possible to harness the power of the Sun. What does that mean for humans on Earth?
Nothing less than a limitless, clean energy source. It would be truly revolutionary. We'd have nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fusion reactions don't produce radioactive waste. There's no risk of a meltdown. And it produces no greenhouse gases. This is truly clean energy.
The transformative leaps don't stop there. The fuel needed for nuclear fusion is hydrogen isotopes and lithium, both abundant on Earth. There's no damaging drilling or mining -- or anything, really. In fact, a single glass of seawater could power a person's entire energy needs for a lifetime. It sounds crazy.
But it gets better. You might've noticed the Sun doesn't need to turn off, or reboot. Nuclear fusion is always on. Anytime of day, any weather, any season, you've got full power.
Then there are the uses where we have no current solutions. Fusion propulsion could make deep space travel possible. It offers far more thrust and efficiency than chemical rockets. Travel to Mars would be done in weeks, not months.
It's the ideal way to power the planet, and maybe our missions off the planet.
So why aren't we doing it already?
Well, bad news on that front. Making it actually work is nearly impossible. To force hydrogen nuclei to fuse, you need to overcome their natural repulsion of each other.
They're both positively charged. Getting them together requires a lot of heat. So much heat, in fact, we know of no material that can stand it. We're talking about over 180 million°F, hotter than the Sun's core. Atoms become plasma soup at those temperatures.
It takes enormous energy to get enough heat to get the process going. Once you get to the "ignition" point where you achieve a fusion reaction, it becomes self-sustaining. But any experiments trying to get there have used up way more energy than they produce.
And what if it works? Think of the Sun again - that raging sea of plasma. If we do generate it on Earth, where do we put it? We haven't figured out a reactor with walls that can withstand the heat and the damage from endless fusion reactions.
And the machines that have come close are enormous, complicated, and prohibitively expensive. We know how to do it on paper, but we don't yet have the tools and materials to make it happen.
Maybe it's just as well.
Knowing humanity, nuclear fusion would end up in evil hands, powering electromagnetic pulse weapons, giving rogue nations domination over the globe. Fusion powered drones would fly with unlimited range, turning the skies into a permanent surveillance zone, weaponized to eliminate dissent on command. The power of the Sun in the hands of an authoritarian would be the end of humanity.
But that can't happen until we have a reactor that can do the impossible.
Of course, scientists try. And they're getting awfully close.
Last year, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany ran an experiment in their innovative "stellarator" reactor -- and it broke all records.
The stellarator mimics the reaction of the Sun using powerful external magnets to control plasma inside a vacuum chamber. The unique design is working. It's outperforming three key benchmarks, called the "triple product": it's creating dense plasma, at higher temperatures, and for a longer time.
Get high enough scores on the "triple product" metrics, you hit the jackpot: the reaction becomes self-sustaining. In other words, you've created your own Sun.
The German stellarator just got closer than anyone in human history. The reactor used pulses of powerful microwaves to heat plasma to over 54 million°F as 90 frozen hydrogen pellets were fired into the plasma.
The coordination of these two processes crucially extended how long the plasma was maintained. It's hard to explain the details without a degree in nuclear engineering. What is clear is they outperformed all other attempts to date, to create a reactor that could reach the "triple product" jackpot.
Commercial, near-limitless clean energy is one step closer to reality.
Let's hope whoever controls it has our best interests in mind.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_nuclear_fusion
https://euro-fusion.org/fusion/history-of-fusion/
https://www.iaea.org/topics/energy/fusion/faqs
https://wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/842/fusion-scientist-debunks-fusion-power
https://www.livescience.com/23394-fusion.html