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“Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab | BBC News
“ Researchers at a US lab have passed a crucial milestone on the way to their ultimate goal of achieving self-sustaining nuclear fusion.
Harnessing fusion - the process that powers the Sun - could...

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Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab | BBC News
Researchers at a US lab have passed a crucial milestone on the way to their ultimate goal of achieving self-sustaining nuclear fusion.
Harnessing fusion - the process that powers the Sun - could provide an unlimited and cheap source of energy.
But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive.
Now, a breakthrough by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) could boost hopes of scaling up fusion.
NIF, based at Livermore in California, uses 192 beams from the world’s most powerful laser to heat and compress a small pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place.
The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.
This is a step short of the lab’s stated goal of “ignition”, where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. This is because known “inefficiencies” in different parts of the system mean not all the energy supplied through the laser is delivered to the fuel.
But the latest achievement has been described as the single most meaningful step for fusion in recent years, and demonstrates NIF is well on its way towards the coveted target of ignition and self-sustaining fusion.
Source
Further reading:
Nuclear Fusion | Wikipedia
NASA’s basement nuclear reactor
Record-breaking laser pulse paves way for fusion
Scientists See Solution to Critical Barrier to Fusion
Nuclear Fusion In Our Time? Scientists Outline Hurdles To Potentially Transformative Energy

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““We Will Send Robots to Read the Genomes of Alien Life Forms and Replicate Them Back on Earth”
In 2010, Craig Venter, who helped map the human genome, became the first to successfully create “synthetic life,” using chemicals and inserting DNA into...

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“We Will Send Robots to Read the Genomes of Alien Life Forms and Replicate Them Back on Earth”
In 2010, Craig Venter, who helped map the human genome, became the first to successfully create “synthetic life,” using chemicals and inserting DNA into the cell of a bacteria —putting humankind at the threshold of the most important and exciting phase of biological research, one that will enable us to actually write the genetic code for designing new species to help us adapt and evolve for long-term survival.
Venter, the scientist famed for his role in sequencing the human genome, has answered a question that lies at the heart of biology: “What is life?” Life, he asserts, is wholly reducible to the “DNA machines” and “protein robots” that operate within cells, and he hopes to prove it by constructing organisms entirely from scratch, detailing an ambitious vision for a future in which custom-made organisms heal the planet, unlock life’s origins and extend humanity’s reach beyond Earth in his new book, Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life.
Venter believes scientists will soon be designing basic organisms to include features useful in farming or medicine, as well as sending robots into space to read the sequence of alien life forms and replicate them back on Earth: “In years to come it will be increasingly possible to create a wide variety of [synthetic] cells from computer-designed software. The creation of cells from scratch will open up extraordinary possibilities.”
Venter predicts in the future machines will be able to analyse the make up of genomes and transmit this through the internet or even space, creating more possibilities in the search for alien life: “The day is not far off when we will be able to send a robotically controlled genome sequencing unit to other planets to read the DNA sequence of any alien microbe life that may be there. If we can … beam them back to Earth we should be able to reconstruct their genomes. The synthetic version of a Martian genome could then be used to recreate Martian life on Earth.”
The Daily Galaxy via The Sunday Times and Kurzweil AI
Image Credit: Martin McCarthy/iStockphoto

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