Last week, scientists studying fusion power at the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced they'd finally made a breakthrough. Using magnets and lasers -- and I'm vastly oversimplifying here -- the NIF researchers were able to create hydrogen fusion with an energy gain for the first time ever.
In the past, they'd been able to successfully combine hydrogen atoms, but the energy needed to do so always exceeded the energy released from the fusion itself. While the gain was still minor, if the process can ever be made more efficient, it would provide a hyper-powerful, clean and renewable alternative to fossil fuels.
I wonder, though, if any of the scientists have ever tried converting all of the power put into another seemingly renewable and insatiable energy resource: The debate on the Internet about whether Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo is better at soccer.
While it used to be an actual rivalry on the field when Messi was with Barcelona and Ronaldo was with Real Madrid, they've played against each other just twice over the past four years. And yet, every day, two armies of anonymous avatars go to battle on social media, posting in the comments of tweets and Instagram posts about the other player, making the same jokes, and replacing the first letter of the other player's name with a "P." (This is penalty kick humor.) Every bit of Messi's success diminishes Ronaldo, and everything Ronaldo does must verify that he did it better than Messi.
In my experience of occasionally being attacked by these people across various platforms, Ronaldo's fans seem to value a kind of alpha-male bullying dominance that finds virtue in making other people feel bad, while the worst Messi supporters view him as a kind of god-on-earth who has only ever criticized by unworthy heretics. It's completely toxic and unfortunate, and it says a lot of not-so-great things about how happy people are across the world and how social media plays up and exploits our worst instincts as people.
It's also just, you know, wrong; it's like arguing over whether five is more than three. Regardless of whether Lionel Messi wins the World Cup with Argentina on Sunday, the conversation shouldn't be about whether he's better than Ronaldo or any other soccer player. No, Messi's career ultimately warrants a new question entirely: Is he the greatest athlete of all time?