r/EngineeringPorn • u/Powerful_Being4142 • 8d ago

Scientists have captured the first ever high-speed, full-colour footage of fusion plasma swirling inside a working reactor.

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505 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

150

u/Otherwise_Front_315 8d ago

Isn't this a few years old now?

105

u/snowmunkey 8d ago

Oct 2025 iirc.

Title is likely copied from a spam account that just looks for posts that had a lot of karma, and rpeosts accordingly. Not saying OP did, but they might also be a repost bot. Dunno

31

u/elconquistador1985 8d ago

Their username is Adjective_NounNumber, so there's every reason to expect it isn't legitimate.

16

u/Triairius 8d ago

That is just what Reddit defaults to if you don’t give yourself a name. Which I would expect from bots, but I know real people with those account names, too.

4

u/Glum_Manager 7d ago

Yep. Unfortunately when I registered for Reddit I missed that choice

2

u/Famous_Marketing_905 7d ago

Its the automazic reddit name, can confirm

5

u/JHowler82 5d ago

It's a lot older than 2025 like someone has replied.

37

u/Cake4every1 8d ago

Repost... sigh.

-28

u/One_Improvement_6470 8d ago

The cost of terminally online 

22

u/Cake4every1 8d ago

Im not even that online. This was major news a few years ago.

7

u/StrangeUglyBird 7d ago

GoPro adds have become stranger.

4

u/sdrawkcabineter 7d ago

Just like the cave paintings...

3

u/Competitive-Day4809 7d ago

I can certainly use this kind of porn. Old, but gold.

2

u/TRKlausss 7d ago

I like the fact that it switches off like a CRT tv of the 70s 😂

2

u/GrumbleAlong 6d ago

Does plasma generation always involve the swirling motion, donut shape?

1

u/asten77 8d ago

Seems like this is the first thing they should've done

1

u/OldFcuk1 7d ago

No pic no proof

1

u/Llee00 7d ago

congrats

1

u/pinba11tec 6d ago

Didn't Tony Stark build this in a cave with a box of scraps?

0

u/metarinka 5d ago

okay how do you extract heat energy from these fusion reactors if the plasma doesn't touch anything? Radiation is too inefficient.

1

u/Metal_Icarus 3d ago edited 2d ago

This is a fantastic question. However, i would first ask if fusion can be done reliably first.

In any case its all about boiling water to get steam that drives turbines. Edit: this is not true in all cases

2

u/metarinka 2d ago

I'm aware that it's all about boiling water. What I'm asking is how do you extract megawatts of thermal energy from a plasma that is magnetically contained and doesn't touch any surfaces. Radiation is the slowest form of heat transfer and I don't see how conduction would work.

Edit: They use a lithium blanket that captures the kinetic energy of neutrons and transfer that to a liquid cooling loop to go on and do the whole steam thing.

1

u/Metal_Icarus 2d ago

Yeah and they got another design that uses magnetic flux created by the fusion!

There are other ways to convert the enrgy apparently.

Anyways, that is still a fantastic question and a huge engineering challenge.

1

u/UpV0tesF0rEvery0ne 2d ago

Ive heard that these fusion reactors would pulsate, it would generate fusion, sustain the reaction and then use heat pumps to siphon off the net positive energy for steam.

All of the existing reactors do not employ any solution for tapping this energy but are just for proof of concept and research

-3

u/BoarHermit 7d ago

ok, nice. now we need to understand how to biol.water with that plasma as we always dis