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‘Cheap and simple’ Bill Gates-backed fusion concept surpasses heat of the Sun in milestone moment
(www.rechargenews.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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That's a silly title.
The sun doesn't produce a lot of energy because it is hot. The sun produces energy because it is big. All functional experimental fusion reactors operate at much higher temperatures than the sun.
Like 10x for takamak iirc
It's a straight up factually incorrect title. Heat is a measure of energy. The sun produces 3.9e26 joules of heat per second. So no, they did not surpass the heat of the sun.
Nah, that's a nitpick. In common English heat is just presence of high temperatures, and there's no specific word for thermal energy.
Also, that would be heat/time, so power basically. The sum of all heat currently in the sun would be larger, considering how slow the convection is among other things.
We're talking about energy generation, so the distinction is pretty important. I think a layperson can understand that it takes far more heat to boil a pot of water than a match can produce, even if the match is at a higher temperature than the stove top.
A layperson would describe the heat of a campfire as being much higher than the heat of a candle, even if theyre the same temperature.
Yeah, I guess that's fair. They're definitely talking about temperature, and I think most would understand it that way, because the layman might not even know the connection between higher temperatures and better heat engines, but economically speaking it's not super relevant. The actual power output is probably negligible; it's a research machine.
Heat in terms of temperature is a measure of molecular kinetic energy, so you can say two things are the same temperature regardless of the total energy of the system, which is a function of the change in temperature, mass and specific heat of a substance.