this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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YES! It's a click-bait title. Read the article to understand the breakthrough.

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[–] alk@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Every minute that passes in Africa, scientists are 60 seconds closer to discovering infinite energy!

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Almost certainly, the pop press is missing every possible "but". Just from what I do understand, how impressive this is depends on the temperature and density of that plasma and annoyingly, they actually do mention that, but then don't give the corresponding numbers.

I found a bunch of headlines saying the record for a tokamak is 22 minutes, which was impressive for beating the previous record by 25%. Progress in this tends to be incremental. Here's a nice little graph of energy*confinement time from The Future of Fusion Energy:

[–] remington@beehaw.org 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thank you for the informative and thoughtful comment. I appreciate it.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Hey, no problem!

This isn't to say that the research isn't great, either. I don't think they'd bother if it was useless. And per the diagram they've had to do more and more with less funding since 2000.

[–] ileftreddit@piefed.social 14 points 3 weeks ago

Limitless free energy that billionaires will gladly charge you $250 a month for

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Sounds like fusion power is only 20 years away.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 6 points 3 weeks ago

I'm already getting limitless energy from fusion. I just use PV as a mediator.