03am on Monday 5 December, scientists at the National Ignition Facility in California aimed their 192 beam laser at a cylinder containing a tiny diamond fuel capsule. That powerful burst of laser light created immense temperatures and pressures and sparked a fusion reaction – the reaction which powers the sun. The National Ignition Facility (NIF), part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), had done such experiments before, but this time the energy that came out of the reaction, was more than the laser power used to trigger it. Scientists have been trying for decades to meet that threshold and the hope …
