Today we step into the future. And it’s a lot like a movie we’ve all seen.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced Tuesday that they’ve made a major breakthrough in studying fusion, also known as the thermonuclear reaction that keeps the sun spinning. The news, about trying to make an effort literal star power that Hollywood could only dream of sparked great hopes because, if replicated and verified, it could one day be an abundant source of carbon-free energy.
If that sounds like science fiction, it’s because we’re well prepared for this pop culture discovery, where alternate versions of our present and fantastical imaginings of our future have shown us impossible technologies powered by a combination of special effects and incomprehensible jargon.
You are probably already somewhat familiar with fusion thanks to movies.
At the end of the 1985 sci-fi classic Back to the Future, Dr. Emmett Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd, rescues his duped time-traveling DeLorean by throwing garbage into a jerry can that the Mr. Fusion Home Energy is called. Reactor attached to the top of the car. And in 2004’s “Spider-Man 2”, well-meaning scientist Dr. Octavius (aka Doc Ock, played by Alfred Molina) a fusion reactor with an artificial sun at the center. But when things get out of hand, he also turns into a villain who wants to recreate the dangerous machine.
Pop culture’s fascination with fusion goes beyond a process that sustains robotics and machines; our culture’s collective dreams of safe, unlimited energy have even been embodied by some of our heroes.
Comic book main characters, such as Captain Atom and Doctor Solar, have bodies that can manipulate atoms to create blasts of energy. Firestorm, who was a regular on the CW’s Arrowverse, can alter and transmute the particle structures of any substance; and he himself is something of a metaphor for the power of fusion, in that in his first incarnation he was a combination of two different people, Ronnie Raymond (played by Robbie Amell) and Martin Stein (Victor Garber). The DC Comics hero Damage has a body that functions like a biochemical fusion reactor, and then there’s the darling of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tony Stark, an engineer who builds Einstein’s own miniature arc reactor (that glowing piece of chest jewelry) to power his Iron Man. to provide. catch him and keep him alive.
The MCU’s New York City is transformed by Stark technology, specifically the arc reactor. Stark Tower appears in several Marvel movies and TV shows as the symbol of an alternate reality where energy – and possibilities, whether super-heroic or not – are limitless.
The same is true of many popular sci-fi universes, such as “Star Wars,” which mentions fusion generators and fusion reactors, and “Star Trek,” where Federation starship engineering systems use a “fusion reaction subsystem.”
The workings of these fictional sciences are functional, plot-wise, but not always precise, clear, or accurate. No matter how many times I watch my favorite sci-fi movies and series, I still can’t distinguish a parsec from a cylinder of plutonium from the drugstore. And even though fusion energy may be in our future, my relationship with it remains unchanged: leave the science to the scientists and MacGuffins to the writers.
As long as we don’t break scientific laws or introduce blatant contradictions, I’m just here as a viewer for the ride. Because it will be some time before we use fusion reactors to power our personal supersuits and fly off to boldly go where no sci-fi creator has gone before. Yet today’s science will lead us to a future where – great Scott! — there is no limit to the possibilities.