Aye. It's particularly exciting what they can do in 2023 with their first full year being operational. Now that all the instruments are working too. I'm looking forward to it.
Contagious? Damn son, I'm sorry. We will have to isolate you in an abandoned missile silo until we find a cure. In the mean time I'm prescribing 10ccs of Bill Nye daily and a Soul Patch of Neil deGrasse Tyson as needed for discomfort.
Really happy about the Artemis flight. I am one of thousands of Engineers that worked on the program. I worked on the ground test stand for the Jetison Motor that removed the capsule abort system rocket. Seeing the video of Jetison Motor working made my year! Have a Happy Christmas and wonderful New Year!
I remember when RUclips was only a platform for people playing games or doing comedy sketches which is nice and all but I love how RUclips is nowadays also a platform for intellects and even people with Phds to share their knowledge and expertise on things like science and astronomy.
I'm so happy I found your channel. I love your enthusiasm for this field and all fields of science, and your presentation of information and news is enjoyable to listen to and easy to digest.
People like you and Sabine are soon becoming the only places I seek details or clarifications on any clickbaity news I read these days. Thank you for your enormous service to humanity!
For some that might be important because that is one of the few places where flat earth drivel gets some respect and confirmation. For others its just the only physics prof still on the German antisemitism trip. There has been some sxympathy for nazis on this channel too this year, so i am not really surprised to find comments like yours.
Isn't it amazing!? All this gives me the feeling that new discoveries are just around the corner ...everyday! I'm anticipating that 2023 will be a very exciting year!
Hi Dr Becky, thanks for your year of amazing space news. I love your explanations of complex work. It gives this engineer with a physics heart the joy of learning about interesting research.
One star that always seems to get overlooked is Canopus. It's the 2nd brightest star in the whole sky, yet it rarely gets mentioned. It lies not far south of Sirius and is extremely prominent from southerly latitudes this time of the year.
Thanks Dr. B for sharing all your vids, your research and most importantly your passion and enthusiasm - have a great break and look froward to more enthusiastic Dr. B episodes - All the very best wishes and HNY!!
Love your stuff. Halfway through your new book, and I'm finding it to be a great read. You have a way of making the complex understandable to us lesser mortals. Stay Well.
We've been seeing some great meteorite falls lately. I'm trained to collect in field data to help recover witnessed falls. Taking measurements using video images where we see a meteorite causing shadows from objects like street signs ect . We use doplar radar if we have covered and that usually does the trick but sometimes we have to triangulation using anything we can . Alot of people think they can tell how far away meteorites land when they seem them go over the horizon. They get really mad at me when I tell them they can't and that its an optical illusion that the meteroid went over the horizon. If I say I saw something and how far away it was its because I could actually tell . Most people don't understand that .
Didnt know about the 300 MJ requirement for firing the laser in the nuclear ignition experiment. There seems to a very long way to go before making any commercial use of fusion energy. Love the channel for the awesome explanations. Thank you so much for making it simple and understandable.
@@IRGeamer There were a few problems that lead to this, undereatimation of funding, fundamental flaws in Tokamak design, and the fact that there's simply not enough fuel to begin with makes it extremely hard to actually achieve the objectives on time.
Great commentary on the fusion energy payback. The core reaction did indeed produce considerably more energy than was injected by the lasers, and that should be the main focus. The issue around how much energy was used to produce the ignition energy laser pulse is a distraction. Lasers have ALWAYS been terribly inefficient, maybe this could be done with somewhat more efficient LED lasers, and all the supporting electronics made less wasteful, however that is a different issue. Other researchers using alternative more efficient ignition methods, particularly private ones, should be hugely encouraged by this result.
OMG, I LOOOVE your Christmas jumper! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Becky. You are a beautiful person, in every sense for which I have data. 🙂 And thanks for the heads-up about the ISS. Wouldn't want any confusion. 😉
loved the news channel -ish style on this one, the light the voice the pace the production. Not that anything of that is really needed, but perfect for special occasions
love the christmas setting, love the sweater, love the briefing, LOVE THE BLOOPERS MOST OF ALL! 😂 "merry christmas 🎄 to all and to all a good night!" see you next year 🙂
Can't believe it's been a year since the launch !! Still, JWST bringing out so much cool data I love it it's more than I could ever hope for, and it's the first year! Like if redshift 20 galaxy is confirmed I mean its insane 180 million years is so soon after the cosmic microwave background and should we even expect much structure. I wonder if there would be any evidence of primordial black holes, Direct collapse black holes...will we get an answer for things like the mass of TON-618. So cool.
Commenting from the future in January 2023 because I got sidetracked and missed out on quite a few of my favorite science related youtube channel content. Thank you, Dr Smethurst!
Merry Christmas Dr. Becky!!!! And a happy new year!! Thank you for all the work you put in to making these videos for us. Lots of love and God bless!! btw... I enjoyed your version of "Merry Little Christmas"! Not to mention all the other little jingles you share in your bloopers. 🎶🥰🎵
I'm hopeful for viable commercial fusion within less than two decades. Technology has been shown to grow exponentially. With better AI and even faster computers constantly being developed it's only a matter of time. The race between technology and climate change has truly begun.
Yep, I think the same. The way things are going I'm really hopeful we get some AMAZING technology really really soon. Much sooner than most people think. I'm still having a hard time believing it myself but it's wonderful to see ! And I'm not even talking about science discoveries and new theories that will come up in the next years, it's going to be mind-blowing !
No, climate change is winning by far. We have to almost completely stop burning fossil fuel long before fusion will make a dent. "The GCP's estimates put the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C - specifically, the amount of CO2 that can still be emitted for a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C of warming - at 380bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2). At the current rate of emissions, this budget would be blown in just nine years."
The break through in fusion is great! But it the media coverage was problematic: often it was claimed in the headlines that there was more energy produced than comsumed, but this is only if you ignore the massive amount of energy needed to run the lasers. This was often not mentioned in the media unfortunately
@@davidbrydon4288 incorrect. The lasers are very inefficient. Something like 100 watts of energy goes into them for each watt of laser output. The rest is lost as waste heat, running cooling systems, etc.
@@davidbrydon4288 actually the energy could end up self sustaining if one were to balance the influx of hydrogen to the creation rate of helium. One would harvest off a portion of the excess energy for our use, leaving enough energy to continue the reaction. This is what she meant by ignition. More energy came off the fusion reaction than was consumed by forcing the atoms together. The problem, as it were, was that the lasers used to initiate ignition are consuming energy just to run them. And that consumption in this particular instance was way more than the yield. It actually isn’t much of a problem. The issue here is that scaling everything up to a level that it would actually be useful is years, and a lot of innovations away. This news is exciting as a milestone, but it really isn’t all that surprising. We sort of knew we would get here. It is just that here is a very long way from the finish line.
@@davidbrydon4288 The experiment was dome by old and very inefficient lasers (300 MJ in, just 2 MJ out),. But, there are some good news - according to my colleagues that are into lasers technology, today's best lasers would require not 300 MJ but "just" 100 MJ. That is still way off the goal, but a big step into the right direction.
Yes that is something I completely over looked or to more fair didn't even think about until this video pointed it out. But should be no surprises the press is aways sensationalist by its nature.
I am not actually a regular star gazer but I do enjoy the videos and I actually saw some of the Geminid meteors last week. I also saw the ISS go directly overhead a few years ago. For those who haven't seen it with the naked eye it is almost unfeasibly bright and fast and at first I thought it was an aircraft. We had an app on the phone to identify but once you have seen it you will always recognise it. Well worth a look for anyone up that early.
I still remember when I was 10 years old and my mom got me up at 3:30am on an August night to show me the “Great Hexagon.” I had forgotten Capella’s name since then, so thank you for the reminder, I look at that asterism and reminisce about mom every time I see it in the sky. BTW, you forgot Beetlejuice in Orion, right at the center of the hexagon.
I'm going to say it: In 40 years time the latest nobel prize winner that made the final breakthru making nucular fusion commercially viable is going to say: "I watched Dr. Becky on RUclips when I was 10 and she got me into nuclear science "
I'm an old timer antenna engineer and I think insects have antennae but arrays have antennas. I'm not 100% on this but I'm pretty sure at least from the perspective of my corner of the antenna development community.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but efficient fusion won’t solve any problems. The problem doesn’t lie in how to generate electricity. The problem is in how we govern ourselves. Mark my words, even when we get efficient fusion, nothing in the world will change: the rich will continue to get richer and more powerful while the poor get poorer. It’s time for major reform. Actually it’s probably too late
My high school class visited the Princeton Tokamak in 1983, so I got caught up in the scientists' enthusiasm (especially when they related the story of trying to mix batches of epoxy that were too big so they caught fire). Eventually, I had to give up following the research on fusion reactors by the early 1990s because it just got too depressing, though it keeps dragging me back on occasions like this. Fusion was always "10 years in the future" in the 1980s, and the saying started to become "20 years in the future", then derisively "20 years in the future and always will be." In the early 1990s, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor was announced, attempting to bring all the world's fusion expertise to one massive design. As of 2016, the cost estimate for that project alone was €22 billion, and as of their current website its estimated first fusion will still not be until quarter 4 of 2025. Recently, I heard of another company in Seattle, Helion, that's doing a radically different design, basically accelerating two deut-He3 plasma donuts at each other and drawing electricity directly from the disturbance of the magnetic field as the plasma fuses. Seemed exciting, and they say they're close to commercial success, but I noticed they don't publish a lot of numbers about their system, especially ones regarding how close they are to net positive... Now we have this exciting announcement that net positive energy has finally been achieved. From what I can see from the press releases, it's a "z-pinch style device", one that sets off a one-shot supercooled pellet of deut-trit. So it's not like a fission reactor or a tokamak like ITER, which are designed to be continuous reactions, but instead more akin to a car motor, which uses a sequence of carefully timed explosions to create power. This experiment is akin to finally achieving efficient enough combustion in one cylinder in a car to generate more power than the actual spark from the plug. Now all they have to do is invent something that will, like a car motor, turn these "one shots" into a continuously running power source, only using a supercooled bit of hydrogen and lasers that soak over 100x the power. The engineering on that should only take... according to the press releases... 20 or so years... Depressed. Crawling back into my cave now.
It is a pleasure to follow you here on youtube. I love JWST and therefor the news you tell about it. I have even build a JSWT myself with 18 Nanoleaf hexagon panels :) So, i also wish i could have that awesome t-shirt in my size.. sadly for me they run out. Anyway... thank you for your great videos. I hope i could here from you someday that we have found them, the others Greatings from the Netherlands! Merry Christmas and till next year!
Oh my god, I didn't hear until now that they achieved nuclear fusion ignition! I'm glad that this channel keeps me up-to-date on the news I care about.
Two weeks?! The days here in Honolulu will be 24 seconds longer by then...that's a lot of extra time to wait. I hope you have a lovely holiday season. 🙂
Fusion power plants are great in theory, but... We're already using a lot of fusion power. Today it's even a fair amount of direct fusion->electricity conversion rather than going by some intermediary stage. And honestly it's probably cheaper and more practical to build energy storage and more efficient grids for the solar plants than trying to smash atoms together down here... 😊
I didn't think I would see someone jumping with such happiness over redshift 20! Love the enthusiasm, have a great Christmas and it is a beautiful tree!
9:05 this crazy dude is from Helion. Ceo David Kirtley said in a video on Real Engineering, they demonstrate in 2024 power generation and the next version could be commercially available. And that video with Cleo ans Simone was so funny to watch 😂. They are awesome!
According to a researcher who retired from Lawrence Livermore, that laser system was chosen because it had the best mix of reliability, controlability, and power output, not because it was the most efficient. That laser used fairly old technology even when it first built and installed. So I'm excited about the fusion ignition because now it becomes more of an engineering problem than a scientific one, and engineers work fast when there are dollar signs dancing around in their eyes.
It's hard to rush multiple engineering challenges. More efficient lasers is just a small part of the problem. E.g. the hohlraum target that ignited is a gold canister containing a precision-manufactured pellet of DT fuel, both very expensive. Even if you could somehow ignite one 10 times a second, the fuel cost is very high.
Merry Christmas Dr Becky. Thank you sooo much for the tip off RE the ISS this Christmas morning. I've never seen it before and it went down an absolute treat with the kids! Very convincing indeed as you say! X
Thank you so so much Becky for all of your wonderful sessions and wishing you a very happy Christmas and a wonderful 2023. So Looking forward to another year of your beautiful voice. Much peace and love to you xxxx Gary
I took my kids out to a nearby dark sky area a few years ago on Christmas eve night to watch Santa setting off. My older son now knows it was the ISS because he's a geek like me. I think the younger one probably can't remember it, I think he was only about 2 when the timing worked out perfect for us
I had watched multiple 'science communicators' on RUclips talk about the nuclear fusion ignition and still you told me something important I didn't know yet. PS last time we say you in Christmas clothes was nerve wrecking but also happiness !
Save the best to last! I think the explanation for Hubble's "excess" light glow will be very important to future scientists, whatever it might be ... I love, as always, what to look for in the night sky ...
Oh my goodness this is exciting :D (Most excited for fusion, but that is because it's fusion, not because the rest is unexciting.) Right on time for the holidays :D
Dr. Becky: I have been over the moon and sun for a week since the news was published about Nuclear Fusion Ignition. This is only the beginning but what a big bang of a new beginning. Finally we humanity are learning how to harness the highest powers of mother nature. She will be delighted I am sure. This is because it is a good part of our purpose to figure it out. That's mainly why we have an advanced brain. This is my opinion. Wishing you a very merry and happy holiday season and especially a very Happy New Year. All the very best to you and my best of hugs to you too. Thanks for all your very educational and engaging videos.
Another incredible informative video! Dr. Becky your childlike enthusiasm is so sweet and infectious! Your explanations are so fluent and lucid. You are truly a treasure for humanity and thanks a million for your wonderful efforts to enlighten us with this awesome knowledge!! 🙏🙏🙏
Great video Becky! This month I had to record my first video in which I talk of astrophysics and it's soooo hard. You're such a pro. I really admire you. I hope one day I'll be able to discuss science in such a great way. I did my best to talk slowly and yet it feels like I'm talking on 1.75x. Pfff.
Here's a trippy thought experiment: Try envisioning the volume of space visible as you look further away, back in time. As you go back in time, the distances at z13 reveal matter in a _larger_ space than those closer and more resolved. The empty space at z13 is less technically, so you get to see _more_ of the matter that first coalesced into stars and galaxies from the Big Bang. This has allowed me to grasp 4D dimensionality much better for the purposes of cosmology.
Hello, Dr. Becky! You may not read this but, I just wanted to thank you for being born, existing, and making your channel. Thanks to your video about your daily life as an Astrophysicist, I figured out what I wanted to do in life! I'm currently going through college to pursue my goal in becoming an astrophysicist so that I can research and learn more about Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and possibly Black Holes and Nebulas. So, thank you for being alive and sharing your experiences with us! Also, if you have any advice to give to me or anyone else who is aspiring to get into this particular field of study, please do not hesitate to share! Thank you, and have a lovely day.
Like, yeah, it's a lot of energy to get it started, but if we get enough energy out after the start-up it shouldn't take long to reimburse the energy invested in and even more, as long as there is enough stuff to "burn"
@@bbittercoffee No, it was not a "start-up" energy, the problem is that 100 times more efficient lasers are necessary, and even then it would still require an unreasonable high degrees of harvested energy (producing e.g. 1 MJ of heat will not allow to generate 1 MJ of electricity out of it). A breakthrough regarding practical application would be a higher yield rate as demonstrated with vastly more efficient lasers and a highly efficient way of harvesting the energy. That's still at least decades in the future, with no clear roadmap for the way to go. And cost efficient fusion is even further in the future.
Thank you Dr. Becky for making the week even better! I love these JWST updates from a reliable source. No hype, just science!
No hype? What about Fusion ignition breakthrough? I would send you all to Congo mines with half meal a day!!!
@The Metal Jedi .. The comment was about the telescope, not the fusion. Clearly your con-fusion.
Yes. Nothing about terrified scientist or impending doon from barrelling meteors
@@freyatilly stfu and watch the video again 7:24. 1/3 of the video is about stupid Tokamaks
The only hype we see is the twinkle in her eyes when she talks about it.
Your enthusiasm for JWST is warranted…. And contagious!
Aye. It's particularly exciting what they can do in 2023 with their first full year being operational. Now that all the instruments are working too. I'm looking forward to it.
Indeed!!!
@@tankourito5419 2023 is gonna be the year of JWST, I'm sure of it!
Contagious? Damn son, I'm sorry. We will have to isolate you in an abandoned missile silo until we find a cure. In the mean time I'm prescribing 10ccs of Bill Nye daily and a Soul Patch of Neil deGrasse Tyson as needed for discomfort.
@@docferringer a bit of Sabine Hossenfelder may also be in my future. Or past. I suppose it is relative to when you read this comment.
Really happy about the Artemis flight. I am one of thousands of Engineers that worked on the program. I worked on the ground test stand for the Jetison Motor that removed the capsule abort system rocket. Seeing the video of Jetison Motor working made my year!
Have a Happy Christmas and wonderful New Year!
I remember when RUclips was only a platform for people playing games or doing comedy sketches which is nice and all but I love how RUclips is nowadays also a platform for intellects and even people with Phds to share their knowledge and expertise on things like science and astronomy.
As a South African super proud to have part of the SKA here, doing our little bit to help the world understand the our universe even better 🙂
I'm so happy I found your channel. I love your enthusiasm for this field and all fields of science, and your presentation of information and news is enjoyable to listen to and easy to digest.
Glad you enjoy it! Thank you
People like you and Sabine are soon becoming the only places I seek details or clarifications on any clickbaity news I read these days. Thank you for your enormous service to humanity!
Beware that Sabine does have more of her own agenda, even if she's someone I recommend as well. But I'd be a bit more cautious there.
For some that might be important because that is one of the few places where flat earth drivel gets some respect and confirmation. For others its just the only physics prof still on the German antisemitism trip. There has been some sxympathy for nazis on this channel too this year, so i am not really surprised to find comments like yours.
Your excitement about the knowledge coming out of JWST is so infectious. :-)
I was just thinking the same thing!
Finaly someone came up with actual numbers in their fusion video. Thank you, Becky, what would the internet do without you?
A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to both you and Sam. Thank you for all you do to educate and entertain us.
Thank you Dr. for the great content during this year. All the best for 2023 !!
Isn't it amazing!? All this gives me the feeling that new discoveries are just around the corner ...everyday! I'm anticipating that 2023 will be a very exciting year!
Hi Dr Becky, thanks for your year of amazing space news. I love your explanations of complex work. It gives this engineer with a physics heart the joy of learning about interesting research.
My god your video has the BEST audio in the WORLD!!!
So clear, high and low end, no compression artifacts.....
Okay back to the video! :)
ohh that gave me the biggest smile about the ISS on Christmas morning. love it
One star that always seems to get overlooked is Canopus. It's the 2nd brightest star in the whole sky, yet it rarely gets mentioned.
It lies not far south of Sirius and is extremely prominent from southerly latitudes this time of the year.
It isn’t popular because a majority of the world’s population live so far north that they can never see it.
You sure did pick the right job. It's obvious how passionate you are about it. Merry Christmas!
Helion is an interesting Fusion project. Have a great Christmas Dr. Becky
This channel content is great, and the delivery is so enthusiastic. I listen to every word!
I love that you give us a taste of the technical details. Keep them coming Dr. Becky!
Thanks Dr. B for sharing all your vids, your research and most importantly your passion and enthusiasm - have a great break and look froward to more enthusiastic Dr. B episodes - All the very best wishes and HNY!!
I didn't think I'd live to see the day we would achieve fusion ignition. This is such a big deal and blessed time to be alive.
Another evening made better by our favorite news host. 😄
Nice to see you had a Christmas movie on the TV when you flashed it on during the fusion segment. And yes, Die Hard Is a Christmas movie!
Love your stuff. Halfway through your new book, and I'm finding it to be a great read. You have a way of making the complex understandable to us lesser mortals. Stay Well.
We've been seeing some great meteorite falls lately. I'm trained to collect in field data to help recover witnessed falls. Taking measurements using video images where we see a meteorite causing shadows from objects like street signs ect . We use doplar radar if we have covered and that usually does the trick but sometimes we have to triangulation using anything we can .
Alot of people think they can tell how far away meteorites land when they seem them go over the horizon. They get really mad at me when I tell them they can't and that its an optical illusion that the meteroid went over the horizon.
If I say I saw something and how far away it was its because I could actually tell . Most people don't understand that .
Didnt know about the 300 MJ requirement for firing the laser in the nuclear ignition experiment. There seems to a very long way to go before making any commercial use of fusion energy. Love the channel for the awesome explanations. Thank you so much for making it simple and understandable.
I've heard multiple physicist say that large scale fusion energy production has been "20 years away" for 70 years now.
@@IRGeamer As important as achieving ignition is we are STILL 20 years from large scale fusion energy production.
@@markhorton3994 "we are STILL 20 years from large scale fusion energy production"
Was there a reason you just restated my point?
@@IRGeamer There were a few problems that lead to this, undereatimation of funding, fundamental flaws in Tokamak design, and the fact that there's simply not enough fuel to begin with makes it extremely hard to actually achieve the objectives on time.
Heard they are about 20 years away from commercial viability.
I love your enthusiasm. (So Northern!) It doesn't surprise me that you can sing.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours Dr. Becky, thanks for all your coverage of space news this year.
Happy holidays Dr. Becky! Thanks for the news!
Great commentary on the fusion energy payback. The core reaction did indeed produce considerably more energy than was injected by the lasers, and that should be the main focus.
The issue around how much energy was used to produce the ignition energy laser pulse is a distraction. Lasers have ALWAYS been terribly inefficient, maybe this could be done with somewhat more efficient LED lasers, and all the supporting electronics made less wasteful, however that is a different issue. Other researchers using alternative more efficient ignition methods, particularly private ones, should be hugely encouraged by this result.
Love!!! Your "bloopers" especially your song.
OMG, I LOOOVE your Christmas jumper! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Becky. You are a beautiful person, in every sense for which I have data. 🙂 And thanks for the heads-up about the ISS. Wouldn't want any confusion. 😉
loved the news channel -ish style on this one, the light the voice the pace the production. Not that anything of that is really needed, but perfect for special occasions
love the christmas setting, love the sweater, love the briefing, LOVE THE BLOOPERS MOST OF ALL! 😂 "merry christmas 🎄 to all and to all a good night!" see you next year 🙂
Night Sky News has got to be my favorite format on this channel :)
Glad you like it!
Can't believe it's been a year since the launch !! Still, JWST bringing out so much cool data I love it it's more than I could ever hope for, and it's the first year! Like if redshift 20 galaxy is confirmed I mean its insane 180 million years is so soon after the cosmic microwave background and should we even expect much structure. I wonder if there would be any evidence of primordial black holes, Direct collapse black holes...will we get an answer for things like the mass of TON-618. So cool.
Your explanation of the nuclear reaction was the best I've seen by far, please keep doing these videos!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it
Thank you Dr. Becky, as always, you deliver succinct, well explained space news. Have a very merry Christmas.
Commenting from the future in January 2023 because I got sidetracked and missed out on quite a few of my favorite science related youtube channel content. Thank you, Dr Smethurst!
Yes, She is unique ❤️❤️ Thanks for your passion so that we can learn and explore a lot , PhD scholar astrophysics IIT Hyderabad ..
Wanna meet you once
Merry Christmas Dr. Becky!!!! And a happy new year!! Thank you for all the work you put in to making these videos for us. Lots of love and God bless!!
btw... I enjoyed your version of "Merry Little Christmas"! Not to mention all the other little jingles you share in your bloopers. 🎶🥰🎵
I'm hopeful for viable commercial fusion within less than two decades. Technology has been shown to grow exponentially. With better AI and even faster computers constantly being developed it's only a matter of time. The race between technology and climate change has truly begun.
Yep, I think the same.
The way things are going I'm really hopeful we get some AMAZING technology really really soon.
Much sooner than most people think.
I'm still having a hard time believing it myself but it's wonderful to see !
And I'm not even talking about science discoveries and new theories that will come up in the next years, it's going to be mind-blowing !
No, climate change is winning by far. We have to almost completely stop burning fossil fuel long before fusion will make a dent.
"The GCP's estimates put the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C - specifically, the amount of CO2 that can still be emitted for a 50% chance of staying below 1.5C of warming - at 380bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2). At the current rate of emissions, this budget would be blown in just nine years."
I don't need a "Mr. Fusion" for my car, but ample clean energy to charge it with would be great.
Wow, best Chrsitmas pullover! One that I actually like ☺️ Merry Christmas, Dr. Becky! 🎅
The break through in fusion is great! But it the media coverage was problematic: often it was claimed in the headlines that there was more energy produced than comsumed, but this is only if you ignore the massive amount of energy needed to run the lasers. This was often not mentioned in the media unfortunately
I assume that extra energy covers the energy that gravity would give in natural fusion in a star. If that’s so then fusion will never happen.
@@davidbrydon4288 incorrect. The lasers are very inefficient. Something like 100 watts of energy goes into them for each watt of laser output. The rest is lost as waste heat, running cooling systems, etc.
@@davidbrydon4288 actually the energy could end up self sustaining if one were to balance the influx of hydrogen to the creation rate of helium. One would harvest off a portion of the excess energy for our use, leaving enough energy to continue the reaction. This is what she meant by ignition. More energy came off the fusion reaction than was consumed by forcing the atoms together. The problem, as it were, was that the lasers used to initiate ignition are consuming energy just to run them. And that consumption in this particular instance was way more than the yield. It actually isn’t much of a problem. The issue here is that scaling everything up to a level that it would actually be useful is years, and a lot of innovations away. This news is exciting as a milestone, but it really isn’t all that surprising. We sort of knew we would get here. It is just that here is a very long way from the finish line.
@@davidbrydon4288 The experiment was dome by old and very inefficient lasers (300 MJ in, just 2 MJ out),. But, there are some good news - according to my colleagues that are into lasers technology, today's best lasers would require not 300 MJ but "just" 100 MJ. That is still way off the goal, but a big step into the right direction.
Yes that is something I completely over looked or to more fair didn't even think about until this video pointed it out. But should be no surprises the press is aways sensationalist by its nature.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and holidays!
I am not actually a regular star gazer but I do enjoy the videos and I actually saw some of the Geminid meteors last week. I also saw the ISS go directly overhead a few years ago. For those who haven't seen it with the naked eye it is almost unfeasibly bright and fast and at first I thought it was an aircraft. We had an app on the phone to identify but once you have seen it you will always recognise it. Well worth a look for anyone up that early.
This channel has definitely been my best subscription this year.
28:40 Proof that Dr. Becky is part Cat. :D
I loved watching her play with the tree. 🥰
As a Brazilian I'm very happy that you said "The further south you are, the higher up in the sky it will be."
But she really said " "The farther south you are" but being British she can't properly pronounce "farther."
Impressive stuff from Webb.
I still remember when I was 10 years old and my mom got me up at 3:30am on an August night to show me the “Great Hexagon.” I had forgotten Capella’s name since then, so thank you for the reminder, I look at that asterism and reminisce about mom every time I see it in the sky. BTW, you forgot Beetlejuice in Orion, right at the center of the hexagon.
I'm going to say it: In 40 years time the latest nobel prize winner that made the final breakthru making nucular fusion commercially viable is going to say: "I watched Dr. Becky on RUclips when I was 10 and she got me into nuclear science "
I'm an old timer antenna engineer and I think insects have antennae but arrays have antennas. I'm not 100% on this but I'm pretty sure at least from the perspective of my corner of the antenna development community.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but efficient fusion won’t solve any problems. The problem doesn’t lie in how to generate electricity. The problem is in how we govern ourselves. Mark my words, even when we get efficient fusion, nothing in the world will change: the rich will continue to get richer and more powerful while the poor get poorer. It’s time for major reform. Actually it’s probably too late
True. Politics will be first and foremost. 👍
Cheap and reliable fusion could help with the climate and probably wars. But like always. Only the richest profit from this the most.
If that's true, you should revolt!
£££ the root of all humanities problems
The rich will benefit but the poor may also. If the poor get less poor will it truly matter if the rich are still rich?
Finally someone puts the actual grid input numbers in their video for the LLNL fusion experiment. Thank you.
My high school class visited the Princeton Tokamak in 1983, so I got caught up in the scientists' enthusiasm (especially when they related the story of trying to mix batches of epoxy that were too big so they caught fire). Eventually, I had to give up following the research on fusion reactors by the early 1990s because it just got too depressing, though it keeps dragging me back on occasions like this.
Fusion was always "10 years in the future" in the 1980s, and the saying started to become "20 years in the future", then derisively "20 years in the future and always will be." In the early 1990s, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor was announced, attempting to bring all the world's fusion expertise to one massive design. As of 2016, the cost estimate for that project alone was €22 billion, and as of their current website its estimated first fusion will still not be until quarter 4 of 2025.
Recently, I heard of another company in Seattle, Helion, that's doing a radically different design, basically accelerating two deut-He3 plasma donuts at each other and drawing electricity directly from the disturbance of the magnetic field as the plasma fuses. Seemed exciting, and they say they're close to commercial success, but I noticed they don't publish a lot of numbers about their system, especially ones regarding how close they are to net positive...
Now we have this exciting announcement that net positive energy has finally been achieved. From what I can see from the press releases, it's a "z-pinch style device", one that sets off a one-shot supercooled pellet of deut-trit. So it's not like a fission reactor or a tokamak like ITER, which are designed to be continuous reactions, but instead more akin to a car motor, which uses a sequence of carefully timed explosions to create power. This experiment is akin to finally achieving efficient enough combustion in one cylinder in a car to generate more power than the actual spark from the plug. Now all they have to do is invent something that will, like a car motor, turn these "one shots" into a continuously running power source, only using a supercooled bit of hydrogen and lasers that soak over 100x the power.
The engineering on that should only take... according to the press releases... 20 or so years...
Depressed. Crawling back into my cave now.
nice tree. nice sweater. have a great holiday season.
It is a pleasure to follow you here on youtube. I love JWST and therefor the news you tell about it. I have even build a JSWT myself with 18 Nanoleaf hexagon panels :) So, i also wish i could have that awesome t-shirt in my size.. sadly for me they run out.
Anyway... thank you for your great videos. I hope i could here from you someday that we have found them, the others Greatings from the Netherlands! Merry Christmas and till next year!
Oh my god, I didn't hear until now that they achieved nuclear fusion ignition! I'm glad that this channel keeps me up-to-date on the news I care about.
Dr. Becky, thank you for your insights, excitement, and informative updates! I wish you and yours a joyous holiday season, and nice singing voice BTW.
Two weeks?! The days here in Honolulu will be 24 seconds longer by then...that's a lot of extra time to wait. I hope you have a lovely holiday season. 🙂
Love ya Dr Becky, keep the awesome videos rolling into the new year.
Fusion power plants are great in theory, but...
We're already using a lot of fusion power. Today it's even a fair amount of direct fusion->electricity conversion rather than going by some intermediary stage. And honestly it's probably cheaper and more practical to build energy storage and more efficient grids for the solar plants than trying to smash atoms together down here... 😊
I didn't think I would see someone jumping with such happiness over redshift 20! Love the enthusiasm, have a great Christmas and it is a beautiful tree!
9:05 this crazy dude is from Helion. Ceo David Kirtley said in a video on Real Engineering, they demonstrate in 2024 power generation and the next version could be commercially available. And that video with Cleo ans Simone was so funny to watch 😂. They are awesome!
According to a researcher who retired from Lawrence Livermore, that laser system was chosen because it had the best mix of reliability, controlability, and power output, not because it was the most efficient. That laser used fairly old technology even when it first built and installed. So I'm excited about the fusion ignition because now it becomes more of an engineering problem than a scientific one, and engineers work fast when there are dollar signs dancing around in their eyes.
It's hard to rush multiple engineering challenges. More efficient lasers is just a small part of the problem. E.g. the hohlraum target that ignited is a gold canister containing a precision-manufactured pellet of DT fuel, both very expensive. Even if you could somehow ignite one 10 times a second, the fuel cost is very high.
Dr. Evil would proud of the Livermore Laboratory and their use of "Lasers"
We're hunkering down for a blizzard here in NE Ohio but hopefully the sky will clear out for awesome viewing.
Merry Christmas Dr B
Aww the space Christmas carol at the end was the best! Happy Holidays Dr Becky!
Finally finished your black hole book. Loved it! Lots of neat info. Even read it in your voice.
Haven't finished it yet but I agree
We read it in her voice and never feel bad about stuttering over a hard to pronounce word
" Bloopers "
Because of watching nightsky news i've started to look for the planet every time a video is uploaded.❤
Merry Christmas Dr Becky. Thank you sooo much for the tip off RE the ISS this Christmas morning. I've never seen it before and it went down an absolute treat with the kids! Very convincing indeed as you say! X
Thank you so so much Becky for all of your wonderful sessions and wishing you a very happy Christmas and a wonderful 2023. So
Looking forward to another year of your beautiful voice. Much peace and love to you xxxx Gary
18:40 that is such a cool thing to do! Can't wait for the news about the amazing discoveries.
Happy Holiday, Becky! 🎅 Thank your for yet another year of amazing space content!
Thank you for your enthusiastic videos. Enjoy your well deserved time off! Love the bloopers at the end, by the way ...
I took my kids out to a nearby dark sky area a few years ago on Christmas eve night to watch Santa setting off. My older son now knows it was the ISS because he's a geek like me. I think the younger one probably can't remember it, I think he was only about 2 when the timing worked out perfect for us
When you were messing with the ornament on the tree, I couldn't help but think "you're such a cat". 😹🤣
I had watched multiple 'science communicators' on RUclips talk about the nuclear fusion ignition and still you told me something important I didn't know yet.
PS last time we say you in Christmas clothes was nerve wrecking but also happiness !
"im so northern" love it, bloopers are brilliant, and you can sing
Save the best to last! I think the explanation for Hubble's "excess" light glow will be very important to future scientists, whatever it might be ...
I love, as always, what to look for in the night sky ...
You confirmed the cause of Zodiacal light during those bloopers. Thanks for a great year of updates.
Oh my goodness this is exciting :D
(Most excited for fusion, but that is because it's fusion, not because the rest is unexciting.)
Right on time for the holidays :D
Dr. Becky: I have been over the moon and sun for a week since the news was published about Nuclear Fusion Ignition. This is only the beginning but what a big bang of a new beginning. Finally we humanity are learning how to harness the highest powers of mother nature. She will be delighted I am sure. This is because it is a good part of our purpose to figure it out. That's mainly why we have an advanced brain. This is my opinion.
Wishing you a very merry and happy holiday season and especially a very Happy New Year. All the very best to you and my best of hugs to you too. Thanks for all your very educational and engaging videos.
Another incredible informative video! Dr. Becky your childlike enthusiasm is so sweet and infectious! Your explanations are so fluent and lucid. You are truly a treasure for humanity and thanks a million for your wonderful efforts to enlighten us with this awesome knowledge!! 🙏🙏🙏
The James Webb Space Telescope lives up to its hype.
Merry Christmas Dr. Becky!
I'm excited for the new Halloween-themed Star Trek series, where they ghostly go where no living creature has gone before :)
Great video Becky! This month I had to record my first video in which I talk of astrophysics and it's soooo hard. You're such a pro. I really admire you. I hope one day I'll be able to discuss science in such a great way. I did my best to talk slowly and yet it feels like I'm talking on 1.75x. Pfff.
Thanks Doc! A fabulous year for astrophysics. Have a restful fortnight!
That's such an awesome jumper! Merry Christmas 🎅
28:40 (plays with decorations) "Sorry, i get really distracted by the christmas tree" - confirmed, Dr. Becky is a cat :)
The night sky. Always awe inspiring.
Here's a trippy thought experiment: Try envisioning the volume of space visible as you look further away, back in time. As you go back in time, the distances at z13 reveal matter in a _larger_ space than those closer and more resolved. The empty space at z13 is less technically, so you get to see _more_ of the matter that first coalesced into stars and galaxies from the Big Bang. This has allowed me to grasp 4D dimensionality much better for the purposes of cosmology.
Hello, Dr. Becky! You may not read this but, I just wanted to thank you for being born, existing, and making your channel. Thanks to your video about your daily life as an Astrophysicist, I figured out what I wanted to do in life! I'm currently going through college to pursue my goal in becoming an astrophysicist so that I can research and learn more about Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and possibly Black Holes and Nebulas. So, thank you for being alive and sharing your experiences with us! Also, if you have any advice to give to me or anyone else who is aspiring to get into this particular field of study, please do not hesitate to share! Thank you, and have a lovely day.
That’s so amazing to hear! All the best with your studies 🤗 try and get research experience if you can with a summer school program!
@@DrBecky I most definitely will, thank you so much!
You’ve got me just as excited for JWST!
This fusion breakthrough could be the "wright brothers" moment in the pursuit of clean sustainable energy.
Imo that is actually nuclear fission. Between breeder reactors and being able to just put the nuclear waste back where we minned it. Fission is clean.
It is good to hear someone discuss the energy requirement of the lasers. When I told people about this I got "That's not what the article said".
Like, yeah, it's a lot of energy to get it started, but if we get enough energy out after the start-up it shouldn't take long to reimburse the energy invested in and even more, as long as there is enough stuff to "burn"
@@bbittercoffee No, it was not a "start-up" energy, the problem is that 100 times more efficient lasers are necessary, and even then it would still require an unreasonable high degrees of harvested energy (producing e.g. 1 MJ of heat will not allow to generate 1 MJ of electricity out of it).
A breakthrough regarding practical application would be a higher yield rate as demonstrated with vastly more efficient lasers and a highly efficient way of harvesting the energy. That's still at least decades in the future, with no clear roadmap for the way to go. And cost efficient fusion is even further in the future.
I‘m starting a petition that Dr. Becky ends every video with a song! You sing amazing and I love your adapted lyrics 💜 Merry Christmas to you too!
Yes! A clip of my favorite Christmas movie of all time, Die Hard! 😁
Every time you say "Saturn," I'm reminded of the song "Knights in white Saturn... never reaching the end..."