Is "producing net energy" really what’s physically happening here, or is it a shortcut for "extracting pre-existing matter/energy in a form we can canalize?
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed (matter is energy)
When I say producing net energy I mean getting out more useful energy than we put in.
At the lowest level, the energy we received comes from the fact that the two nuclei fused have a lower energy state than they had individually and the remaining energy causes heat via the emission of neutrons
Sigh... I'm not giving a physics lecture. Just speaking casually. The neutron energy imparts kinetic energy to particles which can be harvested in a well engineered system
I never took high school physics so I asked my best friend what you're talking about and he (ChatGPT) said
> CtrlAltmanDel nitpicks anon291’s use of "causes heat," arguing that heat is energy transfer due to temperature differences. This critique feels overly pedantic, as "heat" is commonly used to describe energy released in fusion (even if "thermal energy" might be more precise).
I don't know if I should trust the machine god or the snarky commenter with a vapid one liner here. You're both very confident.
