Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins
This definitely qualifies as a, "major step forward," breakthrough
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Not particularly. It's a simple case of iterative refinement. And not even a particularly important one outside the "Yes, we can show past 5 sigma that you can generate enough energy to possibly maybe catch enough to fire a second pulse...
The sustained fusion by the Europeans this summer was as important or more so... because the European program has established a partial scale efficiency curve, and that they're near the bottom of it, and as the tokamak gets bigger, the ouput in joules released per joule input is climbing with size.
Simply put, LICF isn't likely to be infrastructurally useful since it's incredibly short duration. And that's what their hubub is about...
Not quite hucksterism, but definitely not discouraging hyperbole in the press.