January 1928: Dirac equation unifies quantum mechanics and special relativity

If our society were sane, rational, advanced, the headlines would be all about scientific and technological progress. The fusion power breakthrough of 2022 by Lawrence Livermore National Lab would still dominate the news. Large corporations would compete to create the first Star Trek replicator (at least for organic matter, food, etc) by advancements in nanofabrication. Politicians would debate R&D topics and strategy, figuring out which path leads to greater broad-sector economic progress.

One can dream. :) Instead, we have a society almost entirely dependent on many kinds of technology, and yet very few understand any of it, nor care to. Wonder how long this trend can persist until some sort of phase transition appears on the horizon.

> The fusion power breakthrough of 2022 by Lawrence Livermore National Lab would still dominate the news.

If our society were sane, rational, advanced, it would recognize that that "breakthrough" was a minor, arbitrary improvement in reaction efficiency, that realistically brings us no closer to commercially viable fusion power, and doesn't prove anything about the possibility of that.

That reaction still consumed something like 100 times the power that it produced, and the "power" that it produced was just heat energy, which would still entail losses when converted into usable form.

On top of that, the nature of the Livermore reaction is not one that's even intended or suitable for commercial power production.

At this point, we simply don't even know whether controlled, commercially viable fusion will ever be able to produce more power than it consumes. There's no guarantee that it will.

If you're not aware of what I'm referring to, this article is a starting point: "Why the nuclear fusion ‘net energy gain’ is more hype than breakthrough": https://whyy.org/segments/why-the-nuclear-fusion-net-energy-...

While this might all seem like an irrelevant aside to the point being made above, it's relevant because it shows how pervasive misinformation is, even when coming from supposedly scientific sources.