[HN Gopher] The Tiny Star Explosions Powering Moore's Law
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       The Tiny Star Explosions Powering Moore's Law
        
       Author : mcharawi
       Score  : 117 points
       Date   : 2025-03-05 17:09 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | 00N8 wrote:
       | Nice article, although I think this must be a typo: "Despite the
       | fact that a supernova has 1045 times as much energy as our tin
       | blasts, the same math describes the evolution of both types of
       | explosions."
       | 
       | Maybe they meant 10^45 times as much energy?
        
         | hnuser123456 wrote:
         | Was probably written in one system, formatted with the 45 as
         | superscript, then copied into a CMS that converted the
         | superscript back to regular script. Lots of popsci type
         | publications end up having this happen.
        
           | skmoore wrote:
           | Yeah. It's fixed now.
        
             | hnuser123456 wrote:
             | Thank you! It was an excellent read. Had me from start to
             | end.
        
           | saulpw wrote:
           | This is yet another reason I'm promoting the ^45 "magnitude
           | notation"[0].
           | 
           | https://saul.pw/mag
        
         | hinkley wrote:
         | 1045 is a pretty weird multiple. And probably moves us up quite
         | a ways on the Kardashev Scale.
        
       | trhway wrote:
       | Can we repurpose the ASML machine as fusion drive? Asking for a
       | friend.
       | 
       | Especially when lithography in near future will move from EUV to
       | X-ray, the difference between NIF and ASML would become even
       | smaller (or may be ASML would even use Sandia Z alike).
        
         | leptoniscool wrote:
         | you may be thinking of this:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy
         | 
         | Here the machine is using tin, which isn't suitable for fusion
         | (no energy is released beyond iron).
        
           | trhway wrote:
           | replace tin droplets with DT pellets :)
        
         | rini17 wrote:
         | Not really, the temperature used for EUV or X-ray generation is
         | still several magnitudes away from fusion.
        
           | pfdietz wrote:
           | Also, the whole point of EUV/XUV sources is to rapidly and
           | efficiently convert the plasma energy into photon radiation,
           | which is just the opposite of what you want in a fusion
           | plasma.
        
       | chasil wrote:
       | Recent Japanese research has focused on reducing the number of
       | mirrors by reshaping them, improving efficiency.
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41336690
        
       | Mistletoe wrote:
       | IEEE is so cool. They could have went the stuffy way of most
       | organizations like that, but they really try and succeed to make
       | interesting articles. They stayed hip.
        
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