Unlimited energy. Is it possible to acquire? Well, yes, let me explain.
Let's talk about FUSION!
To understand fusion, let's go over these three questions.
What is fusion?
Nuclear fusion is the process that could become our source of unlimited energy. It already powers our Sun and even other stars.
Fusion is when the nuclei of light atoms like hydrogen fuse and release energy hence the name fusion.
When nuclei fuse, their combined mass is more than the mass of the resulting nucleus.
That's because some of the mass was released as energy.
We know how much energy is released because of Einstein's famous equation: E
= mc^2.
High amounts of energy can be produced through this process.
However,
fusion is not that easy because of electromagnetism, one of the four fundamental forces in the universe.
Just like when you try to force together the same ends of two magnets,
nuclei of atoms repel each other because they have the same charge.
Which brings us to our next question:
How can nuclei fuse if they repel each other? Well, that's where the strong force comes in
The strong force is another one of the four fundamental forces
The strong force or strong nuclear force binds nucleons. It is much more powerful than electromagnetism, but it's shorter range
To overcome the repulsion,
nuclei are squeezed together with high
temperatures and/or pressures to get them close enough to each other for the strong nuclear force to take effect.
Stars can do this with their powerful gravitational force.
We can also do this but with strong magnets, lasers, and heating the nuclei to about 150 million degrees Celsius.
Yeah, that's right. We already have fusion here on earth.
So, "why are we still not using it to charge our phones? "you say.
Well, it's because of Q, which is the ratio of the energy output and the energy input. Right now, the highest Q we have achieved
is
0.67. Meaning that the energy we are using to power our reactors is still more than the energy that gets produced.
Which is like investing in a business and not getting your money back.
In both business and fusion we want to earn more than what we spent.
Which is why our planet is still not running on fusion power.
Now that we have answered all our questions,
what's next?
All that's left to do is learn and discover.
If we continue to explore fusion, there will be only one thing left standing between us and unlimited energy,
time,
so keep exploring...
