CLEVELAND — There is real hope for the future as it pertains to a new clean energy source.
Headlines in major publications worldwide hail a recent breakthrough in the quest for a new energy source as one of the most significant of our lifetime.
I was fascinated and wanted to learn more, so we reached out to Dr. Harsh Mathur, a physics professor at Case Western Reserve University, to break it down for us.
“So, basically this is an experiment attempting to tap the energy of the sun and to harness it and create that in the Earth. It’s not the first time people have tried this, it’s been an on-going effort for the past 60 or 70 years. It’s this ambitious idea that maybe you can get ahead by zapping the fuel – which is hydrogen with lasers – because that’s what powers the sun," explains Dr. Mathur.
Scientists in California using 192 lasers – the size of 3 football fields – were successfully able to heat up a small hydrogen pellet to temperatures near that of the core of our sun producing a massive amount of energy.
That's the good news.
The bad news? It escaped almost immediately.
Now the challenge? To be able to store the energy for future use.
“I'm an optimist, but there is no carbon footprint to this energy. People pitch this pretty strongly as really clean energy, really unlimited energy. The fuel is hydrogen and that’s found in the oceans in incredible quantities," Dr. Mathur adds.
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