Alex McColgan

speaker

28,875 appearances 103 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 2d ago

Alex McColgan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 67 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 11.

Appearances

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Astrum Space · What We Detected in the Strangest Quantum Experiments on Earth · 7 Sep 2026 podcast

Even as we burn through our dwindling fossil fuel reserves and climate chaos intensifies all around us, every year our energy requirements rise by an estimated 1-2%.

The

need for a clean, efficient and inexhaustible energy source has never been so acute. voice-verified

For many decades, this has been the promise of nuclear fusion. voice-verified

Unlike nuclear fission, which splits rare and unstable isotopes to generate power, fusion technology aims to replicate the processes that happen inside our sun, fusing hydrogen into helium, and releasing a huge amount of energy in the process. voice-verified

Yet since fusion was first talked about as a serious contender for energy generation in the 1950s, it has become a cliché that is perpetually 30 years away from becoming reality. voice-verified

So why then does it seem that fusion is always just out of reach? voice-verified

And do the new private enterprises that have recently entered the field really offer any hope of shaking things up? voice-verified

To begin to answer these questions, there is no better place to start than the place that inspired fusion science in the first place, our sun. voice-verified

As strange as it sounds now, at the turn of the last century, we didn't know what powered the sun. voice-verified

The source of the heat and light that sustains all of life on Earth was a mystery. voice-verified

The leading theory was that the Sun's energy came from gravitational contraction. voice-verified

Simply put, the idea proposed that as a star gradually radiates energy to space, it cools, and so collapses further under its own gravity, which in turn causes gravitational potential energy to be converted into heat in the star's core. voice-verified

Today, we know that is a genuine process. voice-verified

Not only is it involved in the formation of stars, it's also the reason that the gas giant Jupiter radiates more energy to space than it receives from the Sun. voice-verified

In fact, the planet is shrinking by about 2cm every year under its own gravity. voice-verified

And as the resultant internal heat works its way from deep in Jupiter's interior and out into space, it drives the intense storms that dance voice-verified

across the planet's surface.

But when it comes to powering a star, one scientist

realized that contraction didn't stand up. voice-verified

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