Instructions for making the Sun: How the race for nuclear fusion has accelerated

The impact of 192 powerful ultraviolet lasers on a tiny capsule just two millimeters in diameter occurred a few minutes after 1 a.m. It was December 5, 2022, and the group of scientists directing the experiment from the control room at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California burst into celebratory applause when they saw the results on the screens: they had achieved 3 megajoules of energy by using lasers to shoot 2.3 megajoules of energy at a small fuel pellet. After decades of research and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, obtaining the energy equivalent to that needed to heat water for a shower may not seem like much, but they had actually just demonstrated that it is possible to create energy by reproducing on Earth the physical reaction that powers the Sun and all the stars in the sky.

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Header design:

Ana Fernández. 

Development:

Carlos Muñoz. 

Photos:

Manuel Vázquez.