Technology
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I'm still trying to not get too excited but its getting difficult with all the new videos and replications. We're getting close to real world hoverboards!
hoverboards are nice and all but if this helps us with nuclear fusion itll be a world changer.
Fusion and compact magnetic imaging, we'd have a tricorder and a path to a: higher density magnetic storage, 2: possible magnetic fabrication, via precise layer deposition.
Supercapacitors should be interesting too.
Terrestrial fusion achieves very little that using the existing fusion generator we have does not do better.
Obtaining usable energy at any hour of the day and in any weather for one thing. That will be less important as batteries or other grid scale systems improve, but for now it's a big factor.
Total potential output per m^2 is another factor, especially in higher density areas
The amount of energy you can get per m^2 without heating the planet is definitionally the amount you can get by covering a small fraction of the planet with PV. No thermal power generation can beat this.
Large, inflexible, overly centralised generation is also unable to reach high grid penetration (for example france produces 20-30% of their load from dispatchable sources like gas and hydro even on a summer's night during the pandemic where demand is <50% of their nuclear fleet's nameplate capacity)
Evidence that the class of materials is a thing is decently solid so far (but will still take a few months to confirm).
The hard bit of finding a process or another material in the class with a yield of more than a couple of milligram specks per kg of input starts after that.
Plus even then, the anisotropy (it only works in one direction) will give it some odd limitations. Still really cool though