Have you ever wondered what powers the world, what keeps the modern civilization running? Most people may not realize it but the answer to that is simply energy, specifically the methods of which energy can be extracted and harnessed at scale as a source of power. It’s the bedrock on which all humankind’s technological inventions and achievements were built. Its importance is just staggering, it’s not surprising that over hundred thousand to as old as millions of years ago, early humans controlled the primordial force of nature we call fire, allowing them to advance to great lengths.

It is this act of “extracting” energy we call power generation. In today’s world, it generally means the methods of producing electricity from other forms of energy. The resulting possibilities are just endless. Think about it, if even the primordial energy that we call fire is capable of advancing us to the state that we’re in, now imagine what the future possibly holds? Imagine the kind of technologies enabled just from the innovations in power generation. It has been told that for every 95% of technologies in history ever devised, only just 1% of that is proven to be feasible. How come? Well… we simply don’t have enough energy for the other 94%.

Fossil fuels are among the most commonly used source of energy. It is reliable, effective, fast and most importantly cheap, this of course comes at the cost of huge environmental damage. We won’t go in-depth into climate change but, the point is in order to think long-term, surely a more sustainable method of generating power is necessary. Nuclear fission is one of them, you may have heard about nuclear reactors and saw those big cooling towers. It is perhaps currently the cleanest source of power out there while simultaneously producing a respectable amount of power output. Again, this comes at a risk, radiation is an ugly by-product of this method, especially when things go awry.

So, what is the solution to these problems? No need to look far, just look up and see that big shining heavenly light. Oh, how we’ve missed the most obvious main source of energy ever since the dawn of time! And no, I’m not implying photovoltaics, this is even bigger than that. What makes the sun produces those lights… how does the sun shine? Those are big questions but to simplify, imagine gases being compressed to the point of millions of gigantic nuclear bombs being exploded every second, this process is called nuclear fusion. And yes, I’m implying we bring the core power of the sun into Earth!

Fusion power — a form of power generation with little to none pollution, virtually zero risk of operation, requires little fuel and most importantly with the potential power output of a star… it could theoretically supply the world’s energy needs for millions of years. It is by all means the future of energy