All life, light, energy, everything on earth that crawls, creeps, and clings owes it's existence to the sun's fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium.
Fusion is easily the answer to mankind's insatiable and infinitely growing need for cost-effective energy.
Once a controlled fusion reaction is lit on Earth, all other sources of energy become academic.
Oil, coal, wind, wave, and solar are picking at the edges of the suns fusion furnace and are a faint remnant of original energy from the sun.
Nuclear fusion occurs when atomic nuclei join together, or "fuse", to form a single heavier nucleus. The beauty of fusion is that it uses hydrogen (heavy water Deuterium and Tritium) as fuel snarking out helium and a loose neutron with about 20 mega-electron-volt of energy as waste. Both elements are harmless to man. And even more convenient, hydrogen is the most abundant element on Earth.
On July 5, Lawrence Labs fired an array of 192 lasers with a combined pulse of ultraviolet light generating 500 trillion watts of peak power. The pulse duration was 23 billionths of a second. The laser array was not firing 'at' a target - but within two years, scientists will fire the 192 lasers at a 1mm pellet of hydrogen.
Ignition of the 'pellet' will start a self-sustaining fusion reaction that will release vast amounts of energy far surpassing the 'break even' point. The obvious result would alter the entire geo-political-energy profile of the planet, nearly overnight.
But not everyone is happy.
Greenpeace complains research into fusion diverts funding from wind and wave power. Be glad Greenpeace and the loons that man their rubber boats are not working the problem. If Columbus had listened to Greenpeace our ancestors would have been around for the Black Death and none of us would be here now.
(Note. Into physics? Fusion of Deuterium with Tritium creating Helium-4, freeing a neutron, and releasing 17.59 MeV of energy ends the oil and coal industries, so be prepared for a fight!)
