Technologies

Major Energy Breakthrough: Milestone Achieved in US Fusion Experiment

For the first time, the National Ignition Facility officially achieved ignition in a fusion reactor.

It was touted as a «major scientific breakthrough» and, it seems, the rumors were true: On Tuesday, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they have, for the first time, achieved net energy gain in a controlled fusion experiment.

«We have taken the first tentative steps toward a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world,» Jill Hruby, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a press conference Tuesday.

The triumph comes courtesy of the National Ignition Facility at LLNL in San Francisco. This facility has long tried to master nuclear fusion — a process that powers the sun and other stars — in an effort to harness the massive amounts of energy released during the reaction because, as Hruby points out, all that energy is «clean» energy.

Despite decades of effort, however, there had been a major kink in these fusion experiments: the amount of energy used to achieve fusion has far outweighed the energy coming out. As part of the NIF mission, scientists had long hoped to achieve «ignition,» where the energy output is «greater than or equal to laser drive energy.»

Some experts have remained skeptical that such a feat was even possible with fusion reactors currently in operation. But slowly, NIF pushed forward. In August last year, LLNL revealed it had come close to this threshold by generating around 1.3 megajoules (a measure of energy) against a laser drive using 1.9 megajoules.

But on Dec. 5, LLNL’s scientists say, they managed to cross the threshold.

They achieved ignition.

All in all, this achievement is cause for celebration. It’s the culmination of decades of scientific research and incremental progress. It’s a critical, albeit small, step forward, to demonstrate that this type of reactor can, in fact, generate energy.

«Reaching ignition in a controlled fusion experiment is an achievement that has come after more than 60 years of global research, development, engineering and experimentation,» Hruby said.

«It’s a scientific milestone,» Arati Prabhakar, policy director for the White House Office of Science and Technology, said during the conference, «but it’s also an engineering marvel.»

Still, a fully operational platform, connected to the grid and used to power homes and businesses, likely remains a few decades away.

«This is one igniting capsule at one time,» Kim Budil, director of LLNL, said. «To realize commercial fusion energy you have to do many things. You have to be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute, and you have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that.»

So how did we get here? And what does the future hold for fusion energy?

Simulating stars

The underlying physics of nuclear fusion has been well understood for almost a century.

Fusion is a reaction between the nuclei of atoms that occurs under extreme conditions, like those present in stars. The sun, for instance, is about 75% hydrogen and, because of the all-encompassing heat and pressure at its core, these hydrogen atoms are squeezed together, fusing to form helium atoms.

If atoms had feelings, it would be easy to say they don’t particularly like being squished together. It takes a lot of energy to do so. Stars are fusion powerhouses; their gravity creates the perfect conditions for a self-sustaining fusion reaction and they keep burning until all their fuel — those atoms — are used up.

This idea forms the basis of fusion reactors.

Building a unit that can artificially re-create the conditions within the sun would allow for an extremely green source of energy. Fusion doesn’t directly produce greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, which contribute to global warming.

And critically, a fusion reactor also doesn’t have the downsides of nuclear fission, the splitting of atoms used in nuclear bombs and reactors today.

In other words, a fusion power plant wouldn’t produce the radioactive waste associated with nuclear fission.

The big fusion experiment

The NIF, which takes up the space of around three football fields at LLNL, is the most powerful «inertial confinement fusion» experiment in the world.

In the center of the chamber lies a target: a «hohlraum,» or cylinder-shaped device that houses a tiny capsule. The capsule, about as big as a peppercorn, is filled with isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, or D-T fuel, for short. The NIF focuses all 192 lasers at the target, creating extreme heat that produces plasma and kicks off an implosion. As a result, the D-T fuel is subject to extreme temperatures and pressures, fusing the hydrogen isotopes into helium — and a consequence of the reaction is a ton of extra energy and the release of neutrons.

You can think of this experiment as briefly simulating the conditions of a star.

The complicated part, though, is that the reaction also requires a ton of energy to start. Powering the entire laser system used by the NIF requires more than 400 megajoules — but only a small percentage actually hits the hohlraum with each firing of the beams. Previously, the NIF had been able to pretty consistently hit the target with around 2 megajoules from its lasers.

But on Dec. 5, during one run, something changed.

«Last week, for the first time, they designed this experiment so that the fusion fuel stayed hot enough, dense enough and round enough for long enough that it ignited,» Marv Adams, deputy administrator at the NNSA, said during the conference. «And it produced more energy than the lasers had deposited.»

More specifically, scientists at NIF kickstarted a fusion reaction using about 2 megajoules of energy to power the lasers and were able to get about 3 megajoules out. Based on the definition of ignition used by NIF, the benchmark has been passed during this one short pulse.

You might also see that energy gain in a fusion reaction is denoted by a variable, Q.

Like ignition, the Q value can refer to different things for different experiments. But here, it’s referring to the energy input from the lasers versus the energy output from the capsule. If Q = 1, scientists say they have achieved «breakeven,» where energy in equals energy out.

The Q value for this run, for context, was around 1.5.

In the grand scheme of things, the energy created with this Q value is only about enough to boil water in a kettle.

«The calculation of energy gain only considers the energy that hit the target, and not the [very large] energy consumption that goes into supporting the infrastructure,» said Patrick Burr, a nuclear engineer at the University of New South Wales.

The NIF is not the only facility chasing fusion — and inertial confinement is not the only way to kickstart the process. «The more common approach is magnetically confined fusion,» said Richard Garrett, senior advisor on strategic projects at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization. These reactors use magnetic fields to control the fusion reaction in a gas, typically in a giant, hollow donut reactor known as a tokamak.

Those devices have a much lower density than NIF’s pellets, so temperatures need to be increased to well over 100 million degrees. Garrett said he does not expect the NIF result to accelerate tokamak fusion programs because, fundamentally, the two processes work quite differently.

However, significant progress is also being made with magnetically confined fusion. For instance, the ITER experiment, under construction in France, uses a tokamak and is expected to begin testing in the next decade. It has lofty goals, aiming to achieve a Q greater than 10 and to develop commercial fusion by 2050.

The future of fusion

The experiment at NIF might be transformative for research, but it won’t immediately translate to a fusion energy revolution. This isn’t a power-generating experiment. It’s a proof of concept.

This is a point worth paying attention to today, especially as fusion has often been touted as a way to combat the climate crisis and reduce reliance on fossil fuels or as a salve for the world’s energy problems. Construction and utilization of fusion energy to power homes and businesses is still a ways off — decades, conservatively — and inherently reliant on technological improvements and investment in alternative energy sources.

Generating around 2.5 megajoules of energy when the total input from the laser system is well above 400 megajoules is, of course, not efficient. And in the case of the NIF experiment, it was one short pulse.

Looking further ahead, constant, reliable, long pulses will be required if this is to become sustainable enough to power kettles, homes or entire cities.

«It’s unlikely that fusion power … will save us from climate change,» said Ken Baldwin, a physicist at the Australian National University. If we are to prevent the largest increases in global average temperature, fusion power is likely going to be a little too late.

Other investment is going to come from private companies, which are seeking to operate tokamak fusion reactors in the next few years. For instance, Tokamak Energy in the UK is building a spherical tokamak reactor and seeks to hit breakeven by the middle of this decade.

Then there’s Commonwealth Fusion Systems, spun out of MIT, which is hoping to generate around 400 megawatts of power, enough for tens of thousands of homes, by the 2030s. Modern nuclear power plants can produce almost three times as much.

And as CNET editor Stephen Shankland noted in a recent piece, fusion reactors will also need to compete against solar and wind power — so even with today’s revelatory findings, fusion energy remains entrenched in the experimental phase of its existence.

But we can now cast one eye toward the future.

It may not prevent the worst of climate change but, harnessed to its full potential, it could produce a near-limitless supply of energy for generations to come. It’s one thing to think about the future of energy on Earth and how it will be utilized, but our eyes may fall on horizons even further out — deep space travel could utilize fusion reactors that blast us well beyond the reaches of our sun’s gravity, the very thing that helped teach us about fusion reactions, and into interstellar space.

Perhaps then, we’d remember Dec. 5, 2022, as the first tiny step toward places we dared once only dream about.

Correction, 8:44 a.m. PT: This article initially misstated the amount of energy in the fusion reaction. NIF powered the lasers with about 2 megajoules and produced 3 megajoules as a result.

Technologies

Lemon8 and TikTok Could Be Banned. Here’s How the Apps Are Different

TikTok and Lemon8 are owned by the same parent company, but they offer different experiences.

TikTok faces another sale deadline Saturday, and unless a US buyer intervenes — or President Donald Trump extends the deadline again — the app could disappear for US users. If the ban goes into effect, TikTok wouldn’t be the only app to disappear: TikTok’s sister app, Lemon8, could be caught in the crossfire.

Read more: A VPN Alone Probably Won’t Bypass TikTok Bans. Here’s Why

Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, the same parent company that owns TikTok. It’s one of the top Lifestyle apps in Apple’s App Store, and it has more than 10 million downloads in the Google Play store.

«Lemon8 is a lifestyle community focused app powered by TikTok, where you can discover and share authentic content on a variety of topics such as beauty, fashion, travel, food, and more,» the app’s description reads in both stores.

Here’s what you need to know about Lemon8.

Note: I reached out to ByteDance for this story, and the company did not respond for comment.

What is Lemon8?

Lemon8 is a video- and photo-sharing platform that eschews the vertical-scrolling format of TikTok in favor of a Pinterest board-style format. But what Lemon8 and TikTok do have in common is that both have Following and For You tabs to show you posts from creators you follow and posts the app thinks you will like.

Lemon8’s content is split into six topic tabs, plus a seventh tab called All. The other tabs are Fashion, Beauty, Food, Wellness, Travel and Home. These tabs can be found across the top of your screen, and tapping into these tabs shows you recommended and suggested posts.

Posts can be swipeable photo collections like in Instagram, or TikTok-style videos. Some creators add text to their photos to label clothing or a product. Some will also include the price of the item in the text.

How is Lemon8 different from TikTok and other apps?

Lemon8 is different from other apps in terms of what is posted and how it’s presented.

Lemon8 has a lot of influencer ads and product recommendations. It’s difficult to tell what is and isn’t sponsored content, and this appears to be the norm across the app. TikTok also has sponsored content, but usually these are marked as such in the bottom-left corner.

There aren’t a lot of memes or jokes on Lemon8 compared to other apps, either. You can find memes on Lemon8, but various hashtags associated with «memes,» like «funnymemes» and «catmemes,» have fewer than 1 million views (as opposed to hundreds of millions on Instagram). This could be because Lemon8 is still catching on in the US, but my suspicion is Lemon8 isn’t meant for memes. It’s meant to be more of a guidebook to help you achieve a certain lifestyle or aesthetic.

There’s also a lot of writing in Lemon8. For example, post captions might include instructions for a recipe or a deeper breakdown of an outfit. TikTok captions can have useful information, but those captions are more about connecting posts to hashtags to get more views and don’t necessarily add new information to the TikTok post. Lemon8 uses captions in a similar way to Instagram posts, but Lemon8 captions have one key difference from Instagram: templates.

Lemon8 lets you use templates for your posts to help you quickly format and to give you an idea of what to caption your post. There are caption templates for fashion, shopping finds, beauty, food and travel.

Lemon8 reminds me of a mashup between the magazines Martha Stewart Living, Muscle & Fitness and Travel + Leisure. You can find some useful tips in Lemon8 to help you achieve a desired aesthetic or find some vacation inspiration, but it’s not clear what is and isn’t an ad.

What are people saying about Lemon8?

People’s reaction to Lemon8 is seemingly positive so far. One TikTok creator posted a video calling Lemon8 «Pinterest, but interactive.» Another said Lemon8 is a combination of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.

However, this positivity could be artificially inflated. ZDNet reports that many TikTok posts about Lemon8 have described the app with similar language, making some believe ByteDance paid these creators.

And some Lemon8 creators’ claims make this theory sound more viable. One Lemon8 creator told Insider that ByteDance paid them to post on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators showed Insider emails that outlined the app’s payment structure.

Who owns Lemon8?

ByteDance, the Chinese tech company that owns TikTok, also owns Lemon8. According to ZDNet, ByteDance is positioning Lemon8 to be an Instagram rival as more users stop using, or abandon, Meta’s app.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a leaked internal memo from Meta showed that Instagram engagement was declining. ByteDance executives could be hoping to capitalize on this by giving Instagram users an alternative app in the form of Lemon8. And while Lemon8 was released globally in 2020, the app’s recent growth might show ByteDance’s gamble is paying off.

Will Lemon8 be banned alongside TikTok?

Since Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, which also owns TikTok, it’s possible that the app will be banned alongside TikTok on April 5.

The law requiring the sale of TikTok could be applied generally to other apps that are owned and operated by ByteDance and its subsidiaries. When TikTok shutdown operations in the US in January, Lemon8 was shutdown alongside the app. If TikTok shuts down again, Lemon8 likely will as well.

Should you download Lemon8?

Even with a shutdown looming, Lemon8 is free, so you can download and try the app now before the sale deadline. Just know the app’s posts resemble instructional guides more than memes to share, and many posts feel like advertisements.

What’s Lemon8’s privacy policy?

Most of Lemon8’s privacy policy seems standard for social media apps. It states Lemon8 collects personal and location information to provide you with a better app experience. Some collected information includes your IP address and browsing history. But part of the app’s privacy policy might raise eyebrows.

«The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of the country where you live,» the policy reads. The company has servers around the world, according to the policy, so your information could be stored in any of them.

This is different from how Lemon8’s sister app TikTok stores some user’s data. The company stores US-based user data in Oracle servers. TikTok CEO Shou Chew said ByteDance employees in China can access this data, but with «robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval» overseen by a US-based security team.

For more on the TikTok ban, here’s what to know about the Supreme Court’s decision, here’s what could happen next and here are other apps users are flocking to.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for April 4, #193

Three of the four categories are especially tough today. Here are hints and the answers, for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 193, for April 4.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

I only solved one of the four categories for today’s Connections: Sports Edition on my own, so if you need help, you’re not alone.

The yellow category was pretty simple, but after that I couldn’t make any connections. It might help if you know a lot about a certain NBA player’s resume. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Do better.

Green group hint: March Madness.

Blue group hint: Six-time all-star.

Purple group hint: Think Wimbledon.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Not meeting expectations.

Green group: Teams in the Women’s Final Four.

Blue group: Teams Kawhi Leonard has played for.

Purple group: Ends in a piece of tennis equipment.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is not meeting expectations. The four answers are bust, disappointment, dud and failure.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams in the Women’s Final Four. The four answers are Bruins, Gamecocks, Huskies and Longhorns.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams Kawhi Leonard has played for. The four answers are Aztecs, Clippers, Raptors and Spurs.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ends in a piece of tennis equipment. The four answers are bracket, eyeball, horseshoes and internet.

Quick tips for Connections: Sports Edition

#1: Don’t grab for the easiest group. For each word, think about other sports categories it might fit in – is this a word that can be used in football, or to describe scoring options?

#2: Second meanings are important. The puzzle loves to use last names and even college names that mean other things, to fool you into thinking they are words, not names.

#3: And the opposite is also true. Words like HURTS might seem like a regular word, but it’s also the last name of at least one pro athlete.

Technologies

Skip Your iPhone’s Lockscreen: Here’s the Hidden Flashlight Trick You Need to Know

A couple of taps can really make a difference on your iPhone.

Not long ago, your iPhone’s lockscreen would only allow two app shortcuts that you couldn’t change: camera controls and a flashlight toggle. However, iOS 18.2 allows you to customize these shortcuts to almost anything you might want. This small but impactful change is one of many ways iOS 18 supercharges customization for iPhone and iPad users. But what if you still want an easy-to-access way to toggle your flashlight without unlocking your phone?

Apple introduced an accessibility feature in iOS 14 that, once enabled, allows you to perform actions by just tapping on the back of your phone. The feature is called Tap Back and it remains a sleeper feature that’s sneakily hidden away in your settings menu. Enabling Tap Back essentially allows you to create a button on the back of your iPhone to perform an action without needing to take up any space.

Once you have Tap Back enabled, it doesn’t take long to see how much of a game-changer it can be with its added convenience. Below, we’ll show you how to set it up so a couple of taps on the back of your iPhone will let you launch just about anything you want.

For more, check out what’s in the latest iOS 18.4 release.

How to set up Back Tap on iPhone

Whether you want to link Back Tap with your flashlight, camera or launch a different iPhone app, the path through your iPhone settings begins the same way.

On your compatible iPhone (iPhone 8 or later), launch the Settings application and go to Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. Now you have the option to launch your action (in this case, your flashlight) with either two or three taps. Although two taps is obviously faster, I would suggest three taps because if you fidget with your phone, it’s easy to accidentally trigger the accessibility feature.

Once you choose a tap option, select the Flashlight option — or a different action if you prefer. You’ll see over 30 options to choose from, including system options like Siri or taking a screenshot, to accessibility-specific functions like opening a magnifier or turning on real-time live captions. You can also set up Back Tap to open the Control Center, go back home, mute your audio, turn the volume up and down and run any shortcuts you’ve downloaded or created.

You’ll know you’ve successfully selected your choice when a blue checkmark appears to the right of the action. You could actually set up two shortcuts this way — one that’s triggered by two taps and one that’s triggered by three taps to the iPhone’s back cover.

Once you exit the Settings application, you can try out the newly enabled Back Tap feature by tapping the back of your iPhone — in my case, to turn on the flashlight. To turn off the flashlight, you can tap on the back of your iPhone as well, but you can also just turn it off from your lock screen if that’s easier.

For more great iPhone tips, here’s how to keep your iPhone screen from dimming all the time and canceling all those subscriptions you don’t want or need.