(Could be click bait-warning-see comment of note by @AgropromRecluse )
#Mehdi Xpost
I wasn’t planning to comment on the death of MIT Professor #NunoLoureiro without looking closely at his research first & what I found is quite intriguing
👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼
Loureiro was director of the MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center and Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics working on nuclear fusion to create a virtually unlimited clean energy source.
he was shot multiple times at night in his home but…he’s not the first…Eugene Mallove another MIT scientist passionate about fusion energy was beaten to death outside his home in 2004 with 32 lacerations to his face and body
why his research represented an existential threat ??
understand that Loureiro specifically worked on understanding magnetized plasma dynamics magnetic reconnection plasma turbulence & confinement & transport mechanisms in fusion plasmas
his research directly helped inform the design of fusion devices capable of harnessing the energy of fusing plasmas bringing the dream of clean near limitless fusion power closer to reality
what makes his work so dangerous for certain players is it attacked precisely the scientific bottlenecks preventing fusion from becoming commercially viable
in a tokamak plasma is confined by extremely powerful toroidal magnetic fields but magnetohydrodynamic instabilities like tearing modes /disruptions edge localized modes can destroy confinement in milliseconds and damage inner walls
understanding & controlling these phenomena is KEY to moving from experimental reactors to operational commercial plant
if fusion becomes viable in the next 10-15 years it doesn’t just displace an industry it renders obsolete the entire current global energy infrastructure valued at 8 trillion dollars…
a fusion plant uses deuterium extractable from seawater in virtually infinite quantities, one liter of seawater contains enough deuterium to produce the energy equivalent of 300 liters of gasoline & tritium is produced via reactions with abundant lithium
the raw material is inexhaustible decentralized free and accessible to all countries without geopolitical dependence 🤫
but… fossil industry fundamentally relies on controlled scarcity and geopolitical dependence…Oil & gas are geographically concentrated Middle East / Russia / Texas enabling price control via OPEC & oil majors generate 200+ billion dollars in annual profits because they control extraction refining distribution of a scarce resource everyone must buy
fusion destroys this model by making energy abundant and decentralized
any country with seawater access can produce its own deuterium & build fusion reactors: no more importing oil / no dependence on the Strait of Hormuz /no geopolitical leverage based on energy reserves
energy prices would collapse once fusion reactors are amortized because marginal fuel cost is essentially zero!!!
understand what this means for ExxonMobil which owns 22 billion barrels of oil reserves valued on their balance sheet at 1k5 billion dollars ???
if fusion becomes viable these reserves become stranded assets worthless overnight & their refining infrastructure pipelines tankers gas stations all this infrastructure becomes obsolete in one generation
understand that if Loureiro & his team succeeded in precisely modeling these instabilities and developing active control techniques via AI and real-time magnetic feedback it would reduce the timeline to commercial fusion by 5-10 years
that means startups like Commonwealth Fusion Systems would go from 2035 promise to 2030 deployment
the real question is how many brilliant scientists must die under suspicious circumstances before we start protecting our researchers in strategic Fields ???
bc if we leave our most precious minds unprotected we implicitly accept that massive financial interests can eliminate with impunity those who threaten their business model
https://x.com/i/status/2001827902661275949
He said in 2019: « There are people who are driven by technology and engineering and others who are driven by fundamental mathematics and physics. We need both. When we stimulate theoretically inclined minds by framing plasma physics and fusion challenges as beautiful theoretical physics problems we bring into the game incredibly brilliant students people who we want to attract to fusion development »
https://x.com/i/status/2001830524910997618
I’m not saying there’s a centralized conspiracy but you’d be naive to ignore the cold economic calculation
if you’re an oil major & a scientist is 5-10 years from making fusion commercially viable you have two options: accept inevitable destruction of your industry or delay this transition 10-20 years 💀
https://x.com/i/status/2001831287150244233
I believe DARPA just launched the most audacious bioengineering program of the decade & nobody’s talking about it loud enough
I spent hours reading through the Generative Optogenetics program documentation & honestly I’m still processing the implications of what they’re trying to build
this is about creating molecular machines that can be expressed in living cells to translate optical signals directly into DNA and RNA sequences on demand
think about what this means…. you shine specific wavelengths of light at a cell & it writes its own genetic code in realtime without any external DNA delivery no viral vectors no CRISPR cassettes just light triggering nucleotide incorporation based on photon wavelength
this is a FOUNDATIONAL shift in how we interface with biology bc right now if you want to deliver genetic instructions to cells you need massive supply chains synthesis facilities cold storage delivery mechanisms that break down over distance
DARPA GO wants to turn living cells into programmable biological systems where you can transmit genetic information massively via optical signals & the cell synthesizes the exact sequence you need using its own machinery
the implications are absolutely wild :
single-cell spatial resolution temporal precision to deliver different messages sequentially remote scalable dissemination of genetic instructions
Imagine regenerative medicine where you shine light patterns on damaged tissue & cells reprogram themselves in situ
manufacturing where bacterial cultures synthesize complex molecules on command via optical programming
agriculture where crops adapt their genome in response to environmental light signals…
what fascinates me most is that this high risk program acknowledges we’re building a direct interface between computers that design genetic sequences and living cells that execute them
we’re not just editing genes anymore we’re creating a bidirectional communication protocol between silicon & carbon where light becomes the universal language
If GO succeeds it unlocks programmable biology at a SCALE
we’ve never seen before this is how you get to foundational capabilities for extended spaceflight for on demand therapeutics for manufacturing without brittle supply networks
this is the kind of moonshot that changes EVERYTHING
https://x.com/i/status/2000029573304717631
