I sat next to Freeman Dyson during lunch today and he asked me about the state of fusion energy research.

@Ron I sure did! We have a lot of neat stuff going on, and he was genuinely interested in recent work.

@dcpace Sounds memorable! You should write a blog post about it, preserve your memory while it is fresh in mind.

@dcpace That’s so cool! I remember how energized I was after reading Disturbing the Universe years ago.

📚

@the This has reminded me that "A Many-colored Glass" is a book people have recommended many times. I'm going to grab that now.

@dcpace So how’s the fusion biz stand these days? When I last looked in (around the time I read Disturbing the Universe), it was all tokamak vs laser-impulses-on-pellets.

@the You remain largely up to date! Tokamaks are still far and away leaders in terms of the figure of merit (density x temperature x confinement), and have turned to focus on ITER. Laser-based methods have identified problems in delivering power, but have greatly improved diagnostic capability. Lots of exciting startups, but they are in their infancy in terms of fusion performance.