At the Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s $3.5 billion “ignition” facility, the size of three football fields, scientists produce powerful reactions by mashing together – or fusing…
Livermore looks nothing like the center of the sun, but this East Bay city, surrounded by vineyards and ranches, is where scientists have re-created the production of energy the way the sun does: through nuclear fusion.
“This is such a tremendous example of what perseverance really can achieve,” said White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar, in a Tuesday morning news conference in Washington D.C. The lasers generate intense pressure and heat, causing a rocket-like implosion that creates more than double the pressure at the core of the sun and sends temperatures soaring to more than 150 million degrees Fahrenheit, just like the sun, releasing a massive amount of energy.
Members of the research team said that news of the early morning breakthrough — through phone calls and texts — was thrilling. “It turns out that when you ignite…it’s unambiguous that something big happened,” she said. Before releasing the numbers, “it was important that we tell you the facts and that we get them right before we go public.”
The lab’s National Ignition Facility, founded in 2009, is the ideal place to undertake such an endeavor.
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