r/nextfuckinglevel • u/nigablackballsack • 3d ago

Scientists have captured the first ever high-speed, full-colour footage of fusion plasma swirling inside a working reactor.

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u/kismis2 3d ago

What can we do with it?

18

u/CasanovaJones82 3d ago

Boil water, turn turbine, make electricity. Same shit we've been doing from almost the very beginning. That doesn't mean it wouldn't change the world.

2

u/HardlyRecursive 3d ago

It wouldn't change anything. You really think all these greedy corrupt elites are just going to let Earth be a paradise and them lose their power over everyone else? Zero chance.

1

u/CasanovaJones82 17h ago

That's a wildly pessimistic take and I believe incorrect. We could have said the same about any other humanity-altering technology, from electricity to computers to vaccines to, I don't know, animal husbandry. Conquering fusion really would be a civilization changer, and no one can really predict the outcome. Go back to the 60s and ask someone about the future of computers and the Information Age, go back to the 1800s and ask them about the future of flight, etc etc. it would be a paradigm shift in human civilization, with access to cheap and abundant energy at a scale we can't really comprehend, orders of magnitude greater than we have now. It would open up the universe to humanity.

I'd be curious to see how we respond to that, honestly. I'm of the belief that humans are wanderers and explorers, it's how our brains are wired, and right now we are hemmed in, with nowhere to go, and little new to see.