The secret force for limitless energy? Lasers | Tammy Ma

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2024

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2022, physicist Tammy Ma and her team achieved a scientific breakthrough decades in the making: fusion ignition, or the combining of two atoms to generate more energy out of a reaction than was put in — recreating on Earth the same process that powers the Sun. She explains how they used a giant laser (way, way bigger than you're thinking) to catalyze this reaction and shares a vision for how this technology could change the world by creating limitless clean energy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:02.0	Audio Collective.
0:04.0	You're listening to Ted Talks Daily,
0:10.0	where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.
0:15.6	I'm your host, Elise Hugh.
0:17.4	Today, a talk about lasers and a lot of math and what they can do together to generate a tremendous amount of energy.
0:27.8	Fusion physicist Tammy Ma takes us through the power of fusion and its many potential benefits after a short break.
0:37.6	And now our TED Talk of the Day.
0:41.0	What would you do with the largest laser in the world?
0:45.0	Send a beeb into space.
0:48.0	Strap the laser to the head of a shark?
0:51.0	Or maybe just use it to amuse your cat. Well, the laser that I'm talking
0:57.6	about is nothing like your typical laser pointer. Note, this laser is a thousand times more powerful
1:04.9	than the entire US electrical grid.
1:08.0	It's the most energetic laser in the world.
1:11.6	I guarantee you, you're gonna wanna to keep your cat far far away from
1:15.5	this laser. Now I'm a physicist so what I would want to do with this laser is
1:21.8	something a little bit different. I take that
1:25.1	laser and split it into almost 200 beams and shine them from every angle
1:30.5	onto a little pellet of hydrogen.
1:34.0	Hydrogen, that very first element on the periodic table.
1:38.0	I use a laser to squeeze and compress that hydrogen
	...

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