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China’s ‘artificial sun’ breaks nuclear fusion limit thought to be impossible
(www.the-independent.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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If China has managed to do something that scientists genuinely thought was impossible why are there several nuclear fusion research facilities all over the planet? If it's impossible that seems like a bad use of resources.
I think maybe that scientists thought it was entirely possible, and that's why they were trying to do it.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2009-08-30
Scientist: "Scientific discoveries are meaningless when taken out of context."
Newspaper: "Scientist confirms that scientific discoveries are meaningless."
There are a bunch of things to research on fusion. Maybe they just thought this specific thing was out of reach, but were still trying to do other things.
Like the PvsNP computer science problem. Most computer scientists believe its impossible to make a polynomial algorithm that solves the traveling salesman problem, so most dont even try. But we dont know for certain that its actually impossible.
Fusion is possible. It just needs 20 years of research first.
Fusion was achieved decades ago. But right now it takes more energy than it produces. The theoretical possibility of energy-positive reaction is more or less established. The problem right now is engineering and a little bit of material science. And when (and if) it will be solved there will be whole another set of economical problems, how to make it a commercial product.
All of that hinges less on science and more on whatever intersection of politics, economics, and psychology occupies this space. It was always 15 years away, and it was always correct estimation, it's just it's supposed to be 15 years of founded research and development, not 15 years of begging for funding, trying to navigate political situation, and restarting everything from scratch because previous two were unsuccessful
That is what they said. Twenty years ago.
Not only 20 years ago.
Source: Takeda, S., Keeley, A.R. & Managi, S. How Many Years Away is Fusion Energy? A Review. J Fusion Energ 42, 16 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10894-023-00361-z
I know. They have been saying twenty years since I was very young.