* Looks up *
* Ahem *
Nuclear fusion existed well before physicists.
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Even wind power still turns a generator, but solar is just completely different than everything else
Can't find it for the life of me... Describing a web comic vs actually posting it always feels like a flop, but...
Aliens abduct a physicist, who doesn't seem to give much of a damn about the abduction but is instead enthused to learn about the alien tech on board, so they give him a tour of the ship. They get to the power reactor and start dropping a bunch of sci-fi jumbo about "We harness dark matter to... (sci-fi Ruth Goldberg machine) ...and finally, we use the heat it generates to boil water and crank a turbine!!"
*Physicist drops to his knees in despair and let's out a dramatic 'noooooo!'
Paraphrasing heavily due to having shit memory. I thought it was a SMBC comic, but... /shrug.
you did a good job i remember the comic
I was talking with my wife about a comic similar to that not even three hours ago so if you find it let me know cause I want to show her too.
fission. aside from the fact physicists didn’t invent either, we’ve yet to boil any water with fusion.
We've boiled tons of water with it, but there have been no functional turbines involved in a ten mile radius.
I've got to disappoint you. We've boiled water with solar to crank a turbine for electricity.
But is it closer or further away than 16 km to the nuclear fusion source?
Give me a concave mirror and I'll change that
Best I can do is a convex lens.
still waiting for someone to demonstrate a more efficient power transfer solution
You're in luck. Supercritical CO2 turbines are a thing now, and they're way more efficient because they don't involve a phase change.
Got any sources on that? I would love to learn about some new tech in electricity generation.
One facility opened in China a couple weeks ago. I can't find the article that I read from the other day but this should give you some info
Helion is trying to build a fusion reactor that harvests the energy through electro magnetic induction.
Solar cells, technically.
boiling water systems have a thermal efficiency of ~40% Solar cells are closer to 45% efficient
So line a nuclear fusion containment chamber with photovoltaic cells?
Doesn't seem particularly efficient to me... The sun burns hundreds of millions of tons of hydrogen every second. The amount of released energy we actually put to use is indistinguishable from zero, not 45%.
I mean, that's like pointing out that a coal plant isn't very efficient because it doesn't burn all the coal on Earth at once.
If we put it like that, every other energy source on earth begins that way and adds at least one conversion step.
... except for fusion of course.
Mofos just reinvented the steam engine