This Machine Might Save the World

Two desktop-printer engineers quit their jobs to search for the ultimate source of endless energy: nuclear fusion.

"Somebody described it as a thermonuclear diesel engine," Laberge says

Ha! Awesome.

That's exactly what it is.

But...

There is tremendous resistance from the lab coat crowd to any sort of fusion research thanks to the collective ego blow dealt by the Fleischmann-Pons announcement and constantly having to explain how fusion won't blow up the world or the like. Even this article is falling all over itself to express how little faith it has in the concept.

This comes across as needlessly stuffed shirt. There is a difference between healthy skepticism and prejudice. I see more of the latter frankly in both this article and academia generally.

The scientific community has a long and checked history of elitism. Which is to be expected given the type of time investment required by many scientific pursuits, but much of it is unneeded.

Academia likes to present itself as totally objective yet they argue constantly, and about more than competing theory. Consensus is increasingly hard to come by, and so long as this condition persists, the money will flow in. I don't see this as coincidence.

Also, academia is heavily dependent on government funding, which is in turn heavily dependent on stability of economic conditions. To think that academia is or even can be immune to this pressure is naive. I predict real fusion will be produced in just such a private, and low tech setting, if its founders don't mysteriously and quietly die prior to completion.

Call that paranoia if you will, but ask yourself, what do you think a person is capable of if they stand to lose a billion dollars?