[Brometheus]

Don't get your hopes up yet: This just demonstrated that the released energy (in form of heat etc) is higher than the energy input – yet the released energy hadn't been converted to electricity that could have powered the lasers.

Supposedly this would be done by a heat engine, with can normally extract 60% of energy input. So 2.5 * 0.6 = 1.5, so it is yet again not producing any surplus energy.

[WithinReason]

More importantly, laser efficiency is around 1%. At "scientific breakeven" you create more energy than the laser delivers. To make it a viable energy source you need to produce at least 100x more energy from a single pulse than scientific breakeven.

[tuatoru]

And there are storage and ohmic losses in the power supplies for the lasers. It's inefficiencies all the way down.

[EZ-Cheeze]

We'll know more on Tuesday!!