A Brief History of Energy - by Andrew Cote - Ulysses

Energy powers civilization. It runs our factories, propels our vehicles of trade and commerce, heats our homes and lights up our cities. In the broadest sense, the epochs of human civilization are delineated by the form of energy we harness to power our economies: the scale of our societies, the opportunities for growth, and quality of the average human life are all bounded by the abundance and availability of energy. Fusion power holds the promise to increase the available energy to power civilization by a million times over fossil fuels, without also increasing the risk of nuclear weapons. Power from the stars, to propel us to the stars. The ultimate source of all energy we encounter in our lives is nuclear: solar, geothermal, hydropower, wind, tidal, and even oil and gas are downstream products of nuclear reactions which convert tiny amounts of matter directly to energy. There are two kinds of nuclear reactions which release energy: fission, when large atoms split apart; and fusion,

Energy powers civilization. It runs our factories, propels our vehicles of trade and commerce, heats our homes and lights up our cities. In the broadest sense, the epochs of human civilization are delineated by the form of energy we harness to power our economies: the scale of our societies, the opportunities for growth, and quality of the average human life are all bounded by the abundance and availability of energy. Fusion power holds the promise to increase the available energy to power civilization by a million times over fossil fuels, without also increasing the risk of nuclear weapons. P