Category Archives: Futurism

Futurism only supports companiesthat we trust. Disconnect is one of those companies. We may collect a share of the sales from the items featured on this page.Learn about Disconnect here. Privacy in the Age of Information

Once upon a time, the internet felt like a private and obscure place. But the reality of todays cyber climate is that every move we make is traceable and, in case you werent aware, that data is a desirable commodity. Whether its for innocuous advertisement purposes or for hacking crimes, all of our clicks are watched and collected.

This is an issue that has recently been brought to the forefront of conversations, as the Federal Trade Commission recentlyruled to letproviders sell users informationas long as there is some mention of it in the contract and the user can opt outa condition thats not very helpful, as the average internet user is often unaware of their rights or the current regulations.

In reaction, more and more people are talking about virtual private networks, or VPNs.

A VPN is a software tool used to create privacy on the web. It gives people the freedom to click without being tracked by creating an encrypted and secure network connection between the users device and the server.

To break this down a bit more, service providers are able to track our every move on the web, so are people who have access to public networks (AKA hackers) and the government. A VPN essentially scrambles our requests before sending them, which means that people who have access to our activity are unable to discern what were doing. Its basically like translating a transcript into a gibberish language that no one can decode, thus providing browsers with the reliable privacy theyre entitled to.

Security is the most alluring aspect of VPNs, but leading VPN providers like Disconnectoffer more than that. Disconnect, an app compatible with iOS, Android, Windows and Mac OS X, will block trackers from third parties that are harvesting data, but Disconnect goes a step farther by letting you know what tracking requests youre receiving, whether its social media, advertising, content, or analytics. It does this because not all tracking is dangerous or beneficial to block.

Some tracking helps to enhance your web experience and other tracking helps content providers keep track of their demographics if theyve stated so in their terms of use. A little tracking is respectful and useful, and Disconnect aims to bring transparency to both sides of the track.

The app will let you know what you cant see on the web, and in addition to giving you a sense of safety online, Disconnect will also increase your browsing speed. Trackers and malware puta huge strain on your device. By blocking tracking requests, Disconnect allows your web to process faster and, in return, it increases your battery life.

Moreover, while you might not often run into issues with this, Disconnect also unblocks locked content. Whether youre trying to watch Canadian Netflix and cant get to it because your location tag is routing you towards the United States Netflix, or whether youre searching for content that is blocked in the particular country youre browsing from, you wont have any trouble finding it with Disconnect.

For only $49 you can get a lifetime subscription to Disconnect so you can rest assured knowing that youre not being followed, your identity is private, and your webis operating at top speed.

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Why You Should Never Go on the Internet Without a VPN, and How You Can Get One - Futurism

CRISPR-Powered Viruses

Earlier this month, the annualCRISPR 2017 conferencewas held at Montana State University. Attendees were the first to hear about successes companies have had using CRISPR to engineer viruses to kill bacteria. One of the most exciting potential application for these viruses, called bacteriophages, would be killingbacteria that have becomeresistant to antibiotics. At least two of the companies aim to start clinical trials of these engineered viruses within 18 to 24 months.

The use of bacteriophages isnt new. In the past, they have been isolated in the wild and purified for use.Although bacteriophages are regarded as being safe and effective for use in humans, because they are found in the wild, research on them has been sluggish. New discoveries cant be patented, and furthermore, these discoveries can also betransient, because bacteria can, and often do, rapidly evolve.

However, usingCRISPR to engineer them is definitely innovative. It renders viruses uniquely lethal to the most dangerous bacteria in the world, and initial tests saved the lives of mice who were infected withantibiotic-resistant infections that would have ultimately killed them, explained conference speaker Rodolphe Barrangou, chief scientific officer of Locus Biosciences.

This ability has lead researchers from at least two companies to useCRISPR in an attempt to turnthe tables on antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Both companies cite treating bacterial infections linked to serious diseases as their primary goal. Eventually, they intend to engineer viruses that would allow them to do much more by taking a precision approach to the human microbiome as a whole. The idea would be to selectively remove any bacteria that occur naturally andhave been associatedwith various health conditions. This could be anything from autism to obesity and possibly even some forms of cancer.

Onecompany, Locus, is using CRISPR to send DNA that will create modified guide RNAs tofind pieces of the antibiotic-resistance gene. After the virus infects the bacterium and the guide RNA connects with the resistance gene, the bacterium produces a phage-killing enzyme called Cas3. This is the bacteriums usual response, only in this instance,it destroys its own antibiotic-resisting genetic sequence. Over time Cas3 destroys all of the DNA, and the bacterium dies.

Another company, Eligo Bioscience, is taking a slightly different approach. The team chose to insertthe DNA that creates guide RNAs (this time with the bacterial enzyme Cas9), which removes all genetic replication instructions. Cas9 then severs the DNA of the bacterium at a specific place, and that cut triggers the self-destruct mechanism in the bacterium.

The third approach, by Synthetic Genomics,involves creating supercharged phages thatcontain dozens of enzymes. Each enzyme offers its own unique set of benefits, including the ability to camouflage the phages from the human immune system by breaking down proteins or biofilms.

Despite these promising results thus far, there will be challenges to bringing successfulengineered phages to market. For example, there is a risk that phages could actually spread genes for antibiotic-resistance to non-resistant bacteria. Another potential issue is that it might take a very large number of phages to treat an infection, which in turn could trigger immune reactions that would sabotage the treatment.

Ideally, though, if clinical trials go well, engineered phages could provide humans with a powerful weapon in the fight against superbugs.A fight that has, thus far, included a variety of strategies. Whenever it happens, it wouldnt be soon enough:this past January, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that a patient died from a superbug that was resistant to all 26 antibiotics available in the US.

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Scientists Modify Viruses with CRISPR to Kill Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria - Futurism

In Brief China's central bank has developed its own cryptocurrency, which is now being tested. Cryptocurrencies have the potential to not only benefit China, but the rest of the world, due to their basis in blockchain. Benefits of Digital Currency

Chinas central bank thePeoples Bank of China has developed a prototype of a cryptocurrencythat it could end up in circulation in the nearfuture.It would beintroduced alongside the Chinas primary currency the renminbi (also called the yuan).Chinawill besimulating possible scenarios and running mock transactions using the cryptocurrency with some commercial Chinese banks. Click to View Full Infographic

The potential benefits of developing a digital currency are significant, particularly in China. First, it would decrease the cost of transactions, and therefore make financial services more accessible, which would be a big help tothe millions of people in the country who are unconnected to conventional banks. Second, as it would be supported by blockchain, it has the potential to decrease the rates of fraud and counterfeiting, which would be of service to thegovernments attempts to reduce corruption a key concern. Third, it would make the currency easier to obtain, which would increase the rate of international transactions, allowing for more trades and faster economic growth.

Since Bitcoins humble beginnings back in 2009 (when it was only valued at around 0.0007 USD) the digital currency, and the very idea of cryptocurrencies in fact,has grown monumentally. The total market cap of cryptocurrencies on April 1st of this year was over $25 Billion. A singleBitcoin is now worth more than $2,500. Now many national economies, as Chinas plan shows,areconsidering the idea of developing their own variant.

Although Chinas experimental approach to simulate a self-developed cryptocurrencys usage is the first of its kind, other countries and institutions have made strides in that direction as well. The Deputy of Russias central bank has emphatically statedthatregulators of all countries agree that its time to develop national cryptocurrencies. Over 260,000 stores in Japan will begin accepting Bitcoin as legal tender this summer, and big banks like Santander have announced plans to develop their ownversion.

Cryptocurrencies have the potential of revolutionizing not only the business world, but manymethods of transaction.There has already been talk of using cryptocurrencies to administer Universal Basic Incomesdue to their traceability, as well as for thedelivery of human aid; the potential for which was demonstrated bya recent experiment to help refugees in Jordan by the UN.

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China Becomes First Country in the World to Test a National Cryptocurrency - Futurism

In Brief Google is on schedule to produce a 49 qubit chip and achieve quantum supremacy by the end of 2017. This is a critical step along the way to functional quantum computers that can achieve problems far beyond the capacity of traditional systems. Googles 49 Qubit Chip

Google is maintaining its edge in the world of quantum computing. Its 20-qubit processor is currently undergoing tests, and the company appears to be on schedule to have its working 49-qubit chip ready by the end of 2017 as promised. Until it began trialing the 20-qubit chip, Googles most powerful quantum chip was the 9-qubit effort from 2015.

Traditional computer bits are binary, only existing as either 0 or 1; theyre like light switches that are either on or off. Qubits, on the other hand, can be 0 or 1 like regular bits, but can also have quantum properties that allow them to exist in a superposition where they are both 0 and 1 simultaneously. This makes qubits potentially far more powerful, because instead of figuring something out by trying each option one by one, they can simultaneously compute more than one possibility.

Googles 49-qubit chip will allow them to develop a 49-qubit quantum system that can solve problems that are far beyond the capacity of ordinary computers: Google calls this goal quantum supremacy. The 20-qubit system that the Google quantum computing team is now working on currently boasts a two-qubit fidelity of 99.5 percent. The higher the rating, the fewer errors the system makes. Quantum supremacy demands not only a 49-qubit system, but also sufficient accuracy to achieve a two-qubit fidelity of at least 99.7 percentwhich Google is on track to deliver by the end of 2017.

Google isnt alone in their quest for advancing quantum computing. In 2016, IBM was running a 5 qubit computer, but by May 2017, it was offering beta access to its 16 qubit platform to the public for testing purposes. Furthermore, qubits alone arent the only consideration for actually achieving working quantum computers; error correction and scaling will also be critical to quantum systems. However, if Google does achieve quantum supremacy, it will be a majorstep forward.

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Google is Closer Than Ever to a Quantum Computer Breakthrough - Futurism

When Will We Clone a Human?

Human cloning may endure as one of the go-to science fiction tropes, but in reality we may be much closer to achieving it than our fictional heroes might imply. At least in terms of the science required. On of the most prominent hurdles facing us may have less to do with the process and more to do with its potential consequences, and our collective struggle to reconcile the ethics involved.That being said, while science has come a long way in the last century when it comes to cloning a menagerie of animals, cloning humans and other primates has actually proven to be incredibly difficult. While we might not be on the brink ofcloning entire human beings, were already capable of cloning human cells the question is,should we be?Click to View Full Infographic

The astoundingly complex concept of cloning boils down to a fairly simple (in theory, at least) practice:you need two cells from the same animal one of which is an egg cell from which youve removed the DNA. You take the DNA from the othersomatic cell and put it inside the devoid-of-DNA egg cell. Whatever that egg cell goes on to produce for offspring will be genetically identical to the parent cell.While human reproduction is the result of the joining of two cells (one from each parent, each with their own DNA) the cellular photocopy technique does occur in nature.Bacteria reproduce through binary fission: each time it divides, its DNA is divided too so that each new bacterium is genetically identical to its predecessor. Except sometimes mutations occur in this process and in fact, that can be by design and function as a survival mechanism. Such mutations allow bacteria to, for example, become resistant to antibiotics bent on destroying them. On the other hand,some mutations are fatal to an organism or preclude them coming into existence at all. And while it might seem like the picking-and-choosing thats inherent to cloning could sidestep these potential genetic hiccups, scientists have found thats not necessarily the case.

Image Credit: Pixabay

While Dolly the sheep might be the most famous mammal science has ever cloned, shes by no means the only one: scientists have cloned mice, cats, and several types of livestock in addition to sheep. The cloning of cows has, in recent years, provided a great deal of knowledge to scientists about why the processdoesnt work: everything from implantation failure to those aforementioned mutations that render offspring unable to survive.Harris Lewin, professor in the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology, and his team published their findings on the impact cloning has ongene expression in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesback in 2016. In the studys press release Lewin noted that the findings were certainly invaluable to refining cloning techniques in mammals, but that their discoveries also reinforce the need for a strict ban on human cloning for any purposes.

The creation ofentiremammals via reproductive cloning has proven a difficult process both practically and ethnically, as legal scholar and ethicist Hank Greely of Stanford University explained toBusiness Insiderin 2016:

The cloning of human cells,however, may be a far more immediate application for humans.Researchers call it therapeutic cloning, and differentiate it from traditional cloning that has reproductive intent. In 2014, researchers created human stem cells through the same cloning technique that generated Dolly the sheep. Because stem cells can differentiate to become any kind of cell in the body, they could be utilized for a wide variety of purposes when it comes to treating diseases particularly genetic diseases, or diseases where a patient would require a transplant from an often elusive perfect match donor.This potential application is already well underway: earlier this year a woman in Japansuffering from age-related macular degeneration was treated with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells created from her own skin cells, which were then implanted into her retinas andstopped her vision from degenerating further.

We asked the Futurism community to predict when they think well be able to successfully clone a full human, and the majority of those who responded agree that it feels like were getting close: nearly 30 percent predicted well clone our first human by the 2020s. We have replaced, and replicated almost every biology on earth, said reader Alicja Laskowska, [the] next step is for cures and to do that you need clean DNA, and theres your start.

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How Close Are We to Successfully Cloning the First Human? - Futurism

In BriefScientists were able to erase certain kinds of memories whileretaining others in snail neurons. While much more research isrequired before this is attempted in humans, the researchers arehopeful that this study could one day lead to new therapies forpost-traumatic stress disorder. Snails Minds Rendered Spotless

In the U.S. alone, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is estimated to affect about 8 million adults every year. Whether these individuals are struggling with events from a battlefront or a violent past encounter, they are likely to have at least two kinds of memories associated with their trauma associative memories and non-associative memories.

Associative memories contain important information about the traumatic event, like who hurt you, or perhaps where the event took place. Non-associative memories, on the other hand, are about details that are not directly related to the traumatic event, but can still trigger symptoms of PTSD. But now, scientists have found a way selectively delete non-associative memories while retaining associative ones at least in snails.

They were able to do this by blocking various molecules associated with an enzyme called Protein Kinase M (PKM), which is critical for maintaining long-term memories. Researchers recently reported in the journal Current Biology that they were able to erase different kinds of memories by blocking different molecules associated with PKM, and were even able to erase specific memories by blocking certain variants of these molecules.

By isolating the exact molecules that maintain non-associative memory, we may be able to develop drugs that can treat anxiety without affecting the patients normal memory of past events. Jiangyuan Hu, a co-author of the paper, said in an interview for a Columbia University press release.

While the team is hopeful that these methods will be as effective in humans as they were in snails, many more studies are needed before we get to that point. And, as yet, the team isnt sure that the memories they erased are gone forever only further research can clarify this issue.

This line of research may hold incredible promise for people suffering from PTSD, other mental health issues caused by traumatic events, and even drug addiction. However, this is a delicate area. Memories serve a purpose in most cases, and if we erase bad memories we may find ourselves making the same mistakes. In addition, some theorize that its not the memories per se that are the problem its the recall process gone awry that causes the trauma to be re-experienced.

Furthermore, it isnt clear how successful scientists will be at erasing only specific memories when, by their very nature, memories are interlinked with one another. Even if they can, will all of a persons other memories make sense in context when one life-changing yet negative experience is suddenly gone?

Still, the team believes that the only way we can know if erasing memories is a viable medical strategy is by studying it. Our study is a proof of principle that presents an opportunity for developing strategies and perhaps therapies to address anxiety, co-author Samuel Schacher said in the press release.

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Scientists Selectively Erased Memories In Snails Are We Next? - Futurism

On Wednesday, the price of Ether flash-crashed by over 99.9% in less than a second on GDAX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges. This was due to a multi-million dollar sell order being placed on the exchange. Because the exchange did not have enough buy orders on its books to accommodate a sell this large, the price crashed immediately from $317.81 to $224.48; this movement was enough to then trigger a wave of about 800 automatic position liquidations due to margin calls and stop-loss orders, driving the price briefly as low as $0.10, and causing GDAX to suspend trading.

This is only the most recent of a series of similar events across crypto exchanges, and rather than being a reflection on GDAX in particular, its a symptom of the underlying problems created by the stress of capital flow increasing faster than market infrastructure development.

Although the price quickly returned back above $300, the millions of dollars that investors lost due to forced selling of their positions will not be recovered. This incident highlights the relative immaturity of the cryptocurrency trading ecosystem, which has been stressed by a 20x increase in daily trading volume since the start of 2017 without any fundamental change in market structures.

From the trader-in-questions side (assuming they were simply trying to get out of this position in a crude way and not a malicious actor or market manipulator) dumping the whole position at once will have likely incurred millions in liquidity costs. A single huge move like this is both bad for them and for the margin traders who were forced out of positions at even worse prices, all due to price actions that would be easily avoidable through more intelligent trading logic.

On the other side, the exchange doesnt have adequate safeguards to prevent such a flash-crash. When a participant has a margin position less than their margin requirements in traditional markets, they are typically given 2448 hours to post collateral. GDAX, on the other hand, seems to instantly liquidate you (with market orders) into their very thin order book. Some version of this problem exists on most crypto exchanges, although a few (like Poloniex) try to mitigate it with simple trading logic to soften the price impact of underwater margin position liquidations.

GDAX stop losses operate similarly. For major foreign exchange trading pairs in traditional markets, the largest differential between a persons stop loss and actual execution price is ~0.10%. On GDAX, people who had stop losses at $316 actually sold their ether at $0.10. Furthermore, GDAX does not specify if stop orders are time-priority based or price based. For example, if someone has a stop loss order at $50, and someone puts a stop loss order later at $100, when a flash crash occurs, who gets to sell their ether first?

While this creates a short term windfall in margin calls for the exchanges owners, they pay that price in reputation and deterring players from trading crypto on margin. The uncertainty a trader has to live with in this environment is one of the major barriers to entry for the large institutional pools of capital that can bring the crypto markets into maturity and raise the overall market cap to the size of traditional asset classes.

While these events are frustrating due to the negative impact they have on the space as a whole, they are also exciting because they illustrate the massive opportunity present for those willing to do the work to build out sophisticated financial infrastructure.

The Omega One platform, which will be launched later in 2017, will provide a structural solution to problems like this, protecting both traders and exchanges.

If the trader who put the $30m order on GDAX had put the order in on Omega One, the market would barely have moved at all. Instead, the Omega trading engine would have taken this traders order and broken it into thousands of tiny sell orders, and placed those orders intelligently over time across all the worlds liquid crypto exchanges.

The order books on GDAX, Poloniex, Bitfinex, Kraken, and other exchanges would each have seen a tiny increment of additional selling pressure in the first seconds after the order enough to absorb the available demand to buy on those exchanges, but not enough to force a price move.

As those initial sell orders were traded, the Omega One trading engine would have monitored the outcomes and adjusted behavior accordingly within milliseconds, releasing sell orders to the market at exactly the pace that the market could absorb. Instead of pushing the entire order into one place within one second and thus crashing the market, Omega One would have spread the order out over all the worlds crypto exchanges over the space of perhaps an hour, and nobody would be any the wiser for it.

In addition to not losing millions of dollars and crashing the market, the unknown trader from Wednesday would have also have avoided the risk of putting their millions of dollars worth of crypto in the hands of an exchange. In order to sell the Ether on GDAX, they first needed to send that Ether to GDAX, giving up custody of their funds and trusting GDAX not to be hacked or otherwise compromise their funds.

If the unknown trader had been using Omega One, they could have kept their funds on the Ethereum blockchain in a wallet under their control, right up until the point of settlement. The combination of security and cost benefits provided by Omega One will transform the crypto markets, facilitating the next level of maturity of the crypto trading ecosystem.

Disclosure: Futurism is exploring a financial relationship with Omega One and has a personal affiliation with ConsenSys. This is a piece of editorial content. Omega One and ConsenSys do not have any review privileges on editorial decisions.

Originally posted here:
Why the Ethereum Flash Crash Isn't Surprising, and What It Means for Crypto - Futurism

Ten Strong

The Solar System hasnt been the same since Pluto was downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet, and all bets have been off since this monumental decision. Case in point, last year, scientists at the California Institute of Technology proposed that there might be a true Planet Ninein our solar system. The team asserted that it appears to be 10 times the mass of Earth and that it is hiding out in the remote recesses of our solar systemwell beyond the orbit of Pluto.

At the time of the discovery, Mike Brown, who was behind the work, noted that the existence of a 9th planet is extremely likely: Hey Planet Nine fans, a new eccentric KBO was discovered. And it is exactly where Planet Nine says it should be, Brown tweeted. Furthermore, he says, the new object takes the probability of this being a statistical fluke down to ~.001% or so.

Similar discoveries have been made in relation to new dwarf planets. Located about 13.7 billion km (8.5 billion miles) from the Sun, 2014 UZ224 measures about 530 km (330 miles) in diameter and takes around 1,100 Earth years to complete its orbit. And so, our littler corner of the cosmos has been in quite the state of flux.

Kathryn Volk and Renu Malhotra at the University of Arizona have noticed some strange movement out in the Kuiper beltmovement that they believe could suggest the existence of a tenth planet. To break this down a bit: Objects in the Kuiper belt are far enough away from the other major bodies in our solar system that the gravitational influence of the large planets doesnt impact them (at least, not to a measurable degree); however, their movements can still be predicted, thanks to sky surveys and a host of advanced technologies.

Notably, if these predictions dont match up, it may mean theres another objectanother large bodypast our vision whose gravity is impacting themovements of the Kuiper belt objects.

The search for Planet Ninehas lead scientists to believe that it is orbiting around700 AU from the Sun. However, Volk and Malhotra believe that this tenth planet could be much closer,as the orbit of Kuiper belt bodies shifted just beyond 50 AU. They also contend that the planet would be roughly comparable to Mars, in terms of size.

Other astronomers, however, are not so quick to hop on this train of thought. Alessandro Morbidelli at the Cte dAzur Observatory in Nice, France tellsNew Scientist I am dubious that a planet so close and so bright would have remained unnoticed.

Still, Volk is confident in these findings, which are set to be published in The Astronomical Journal. It would have to be quite a fluke for this to not be a real effect, she says. We think there is a real signal there and this implies an additional planet.

The discovery of more bodies in the Kuiper beltwill help to support or debunk these findings. Either way, our little solar family is going to continue to grow with these long-lost distant relations.

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New Evidence Suggests That Our Solar System Has 10 Planets - Futurism

In Brief At a recent ESA Science Program Committee meeting the LISA mission was set for a 2034 launch. The trio of satellites will search for gravitational waves from collisions of supermassive black holes millions of times larger than those detected by LIGO. LISA Launch Set

The ESAs Science Program Committee met on June 20, and at the top of their agenda was addressing planning for theagencys missions to come over thenext 20 years one ofwhich will be athree satellite Laser Interferometer Space Antenna mission (LISA). The space antennawas designed to detect gravitational waves. The LISA mission has been selected to move forward and is set to launch in 2034.

The project uses the satellite trio to create a huge triangle in space. The satellites form the corners and lasers bouncing across the 2.5 million kilometers (1.55 million miles) between them form itssides. The triangle itself will follow Earth as it orbits the Sun. Meanwhile, the satellites will be sorting through an impressive array of cosmic noise to determine which signals are the most promising signs of supermassive black holes, and which are just false leads.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) first detected gravitational waves in September 2015, confirming its initial findings when the waves weredetected again in June of 2016. By February of 2017, scientists learned that LIGO also produces the waves. Earlier this year, LIGOdetected the waves for the third time.They appearto be from a supermassive black hole thats 49 times larger than our sun.

LISA is taking the detection of gravitational waves to the next level by searching for supermassive black holes millions of times larger than those found by LIGO. LISA should also be able to give scientists enough lead time to observe the black holes with telescopes, enabling us to discover more about how these collisions work.

Well be able to see signals for months, so well have time to point all these other telescopes at that point in the sky to see if theres any other signals coming from that area when the merger happens, ESAs senior advisor for science & exploration Mark McCaughrean told New Scientist.

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Europe's Space Program Will Launch a Gravitational Wave Hunting Spacecraft in 2034 - Futurism

In BriefResearchers from the Chalmers University of Technology thinkthey've developed a method that could eliminate one of remainingobstacles to stable and sustainable nuclear fusion, which couldprovide the world with a source of virtually limitless cleanenergy. Taking It Slow

Scientists consider nuclear fusion the holy grail of energy production for good reason. Not only could it provide a virtually unlimited amount of energy, the energy would also be clean.

To that end, nuclear scientists have been hard at work since the dawn of the Atomic Age to replicate this energy that feeds the stars, and just this week, a team from the Chalmers University of Technology published a new study inPhysical Review Lettersthat outlines a way to eliminate one of the biggest remaining obstacles.

While nuclear fission creates energy by splitting atoms, fusion works in reverse. By combining two light nuclei, usually hydrogen atoms, nuclear fusion generates several times more energy than fission. Sustaining this reaction, which occurs within conditions of intense pressure and high temperatures, is difficult on its own, and the matter is further complicated byrunaway electrons, which candamage or even destroyfusion reactors.

The Chalmers researchers came up with a method to manage these runaway electrons. They found that injecting heavy ions in gas or pellet form into the reactor slows down the erring electrons by colliding with them. When we can effectively decelerate runaway electrons, we are one step closer to a functional fusion reactor, study co-author Linnea Hesslow said in a university press release.

As efforts to improve the worlds renewable energy sources continue, many see nuclear fusion as having the most potential. It can provide clean energy, with virtually zero carbon emissions, and it isnt seasonal like solar and wind.

Considering there are so few options for solving the worlds growing energy needs in a sustainable way, fusion energy is incredibly exciting since it takes its fuel from ordinary seawater, Hesslow added.

Thankfully, a number of efforts tostabilize nuclear fusionare underway. For instance, a Canadian collective aims to replace fossil fuels with nuclear fusion by the 2030s. That timeline is possible, especially considering the progress made over the past 50 years in fusion energy, but it wont be easy.

Many believe it will work, but its easier to travel to Mars than it is to achieve fusion. You could say that we are trying to harvest stars here on Earth, and that can take time, Hesslow explained. It takes incredibly high temperatures, hotter than the center of the Sun, for us to successfully achieve fusion here on Earth. Thats why I hope research is given the resources needed to solve the energy issue in time.

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Fusion Breakthrough Puts Us One Step Closer to Limitless Clean Energy - Futurism