An experiment that produced a burst of energy that lasted 100 trillionths of a second might not seem consequential, but considering that it generated 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power (the same process our sun and stars use to create energy), it represents a major milestone for scientists seeking the holy grail of energy—an inexhaustible, clean source of power.
I recently met with the senior scientists behind what’s been called a “Wright Brothers moment.” They took me on a tour of the mammoth facility where these fusion experiments take place—the National Ignition Facility (NIF) that resides in a highly-secure location at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, fifty miles east of San Francisco.
The building that contains the world’s largest and most energetic laser is the size of three football fields. By focusing 192 gigantic laser beams onto a target the size of a BB pellet, scientists generated about 10% of the power that the sun shines on the Earth in a typical day.
The experiment puts scientists at the threshold of fusion ignition—a Grand Challenge, the ultimate moonshot. When the BBC asked Stephen Hawking to name one world-changing idea he’d like to see humanity implement, the famed physicist named nuclear fusion for its ability to “provide an endless supply of clean energy without pollution or global warming.”
“The science behind this result is gobsmacking,” according to British physicist Dr. Arthur Turrell, author of The Star Builders. In an email exchange with Turrell, he told me that NIF’s breakthrough is “momentous” because it’s the closest anyone has come to recreating the power source of stars in a controlled lab environment here on Earth.
“The team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a hair’s breadth away from showing the world that fusion has the potential to be an energy source. To me, this is the most exciting experiment on the planet today,” says Turrell.
Moonshot Leaders Are Mission Drivers
Moonshots and grand challenges require teamwork, billions of dollars in funding, and thousands of people who are inspired to pursue a shared vision. Successfully achieving such a challenge requires leaders who are skilled at communicating complexity and motivating teams over years and even decades.
Dr. Kimberly Budil is one such leader. She is the first female director of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. When I sat down with Budil at NIF, she told me that the lab itself was founded around the concept of team science: bringing together large multidisciplinary teams of scientists, engineers, chemists, and material scientists to tackle problems that are too big for any single group to accomplish on its own.
A big part of Budil’s job is continuous and consistent communication across scientific disciplines to “reinforce the purpose of the challenge, the magnitude of it, the reason we’re doing it, and the scientific opportunity that it presents.”
Communicating across disciplines represents its own type of grand challenge. NIF partners with more than 200 organizations worldwide, from governmental agencies to research universities. Every partner must be kept informed at each step of the process and in a language they can understand.
Budil says a critical part of her job is to act as the mission driver: keeping everyone aligned on long-term goals, explaining why their work matters, and how their achievements—both large and small—contribute to solving incredibly difficult scientific problems. Without effective communication, it would be impossible to sustain the world’s attention over decades—the timeline often required to solve grand challenges.
“Moonshot goals are inherently motivating,” says Budil. “That’s why it’s important to have a big, ambitious goal at the end of the road.” The big goal at NIF is aching ‘ignition,’ a process whereby the energy output from a controlled fusion experiment is greater than the energy required to sustain the reaction. “That’s really, really hard,” adds Budil. “But we’re the people who can do it. We have the facility, the people, the know-how, the grit and determination, the ingenuity and innovation to make this happen.”
Cross-Disciplinary Communication
As a communication coach, I often talk about simplifying complex science. But simple doesn’t mean “dumbing down” the content. Instead, a better approach is to make science accessible to people from different disciplines.
“Start from the perspective that the people you’re talking to are very smart,” Budil suggests. “How would you explain what you do to highly intelligent people who are not experts in your work? We spend a lot of time helping our scientists communicate in a much more accessible manner to distill their messages to their essence. As scientists, we get wrapped up in all the beautiful details. They are all very important and, to a scientific audience, they are relevant, interesting, and exciting. But they’re not necessarily salient to the key elements of the story. Get to the heart of the matter.”
During our discussion, Budil, who holds a Ph.D. in applied science and engineering, moved seamlessly from the language of physics to plain language that non-scientists can understand. That’s the sign of a leader who has spent years learning to communicate complex messages to different audiences.
For example, when I asked Budil to explain the scientific community’s excitement about an experiment that lasted just 100 trillionth of a second, she responded with a rhetorical device that great communicators use to explain abstract ideas—the analogy.
“I like to use the analogy of trying to light a match,” Budil explained.
“Let’s say the goal of lighting a match is to burn up the entire match. If you strike it just right, it will flare up, and a flame will be created that will eventually burn up the entire match. Sometimes, you get a little flare, and the match goes out. That’s what happened here. The goal for ignition and sustained burn is to consume the whole match. We sparked the match and had a moment of flame. It’s a starting point. We are on the threshold of ignition. When we can sustain that burn a little longer, the numbers will be more eye-popping.”
According to the New York Times, the historic achievements at NIF are turning skeptics into believers. For decades, many experts didn’t believe that fusion ignition was possible, but achieving the impossible is what motivated Budil to join the Lab as a graduate student in 1987. “If the problem is big enough, complex enough, and challenging enough, we’re the people you call,” Budil says.
The experiment puts scientists at the threshold of fusion ignition—a Grand Challenge, the ultimate moonshot. When the BBC asked Stephen Hawking to name one world-changing idea he’d like to see humanity implement, the famed physicist named nuclear fusion for its ability to “provide an endless supply of clean energy without pollution or global warming.”
“The science behind this result is gobsmacking,” according to British physicist Dr. Arthur Turrell, author of The Star Builders. In an email exchange with Turrell, he told me that NIF’s breakthrough is “momentous” because it’s the closest anyone has come to recreating the power source of stars in a controlled lab environment here on Earth.
“The team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a hair’s breadth away from showing the world that fusion has the potential to be an energy source. To me, this is the most exciting experiment on the planet today,” says Turrell.
Moonshot Leaders Are Mission Drivers
Moonshots and grand challenges require teamwork, billions of dollars in funding, and thousands of people who are inspired to pursue a shared vision. Successfully achieving such a challenge requires leaders who are skilled at communicating complexity and motivating teams over years and even decades.
Dr. Kimberly Budil is one such leader. She is the first female director of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. When I sat down with Budil at NIF, she told me that the lab itself was founded around the concept of team science: bringing together large multidisciplinary teams of scientists, engineers, chemists, and material scientists to tackle problems that are too big for any single group to accomplish on its own.
A big part of Budil’s job is continuous and consistent communication across scientific disciplines to “reinforce the purpose of the challenge, the magnitude of it, the reason we’re doing it, and the scientific opportunity that it presents.”
Communicating across disciplines represents its own type of grand challenge. NIF partners with more than 200 organizations worldwide, from governmental agencies to research universities. Every partner must be kept informed at each step of the process and in a language they can understand.
Budil says a critical part of her job is to act as the mission driver: keeping everyone aligned on long-term goals, explaining why their work matters, and how their achievements—both large and small—contribute to solving incredibly difficult scientific problems. Without effective communication, it would be impossible to sustain the world’s attention over decades—the timeline often required to solve grand challenges.
“Moonshot goals are inherently motivating,” says Budil. “That’s why it’s important to have a big, ambitious goal at the end of the road.” The big goal at NIF is aching ‘ignition,’ a process whereby the energy output from a controlled fusion experiment is greater than the energy required to sustain the reaction. “That’s really, really hard,” adds Budil. “But we’re the people who can do it. We have the facility, the people, the know-how, the grit and determination, the ingenuity and innovation to make this happen.”
Cross-Disciplinary Communication
As a communication coach, I often talk about simplifying complex science. But simple doesn’t mean “dumbing down” the content. Instead, a better approach is to make science accessible to people from different disciplines.
“Start from the perspective that the people you’re talking to are very smart,” Budil suggests. “How would you explain what you do to highly intelligent people who are not experts in your work? We spend a lot of time helping our scientists communicate in a much more accessible manner to distill their messages to their essence. As scientists, we get wrapped up in all the beautiful details. They are all very important and, to a scientific audience, they are relevant, interesting, and exciting. But they’re not necessarily salient to the key elements of the story. Get to the heart of the matter.”
During our discussion, Budil, who holds a Ph.D. in applied science and engineering, moved seamlessly from the language of physics to plain language that non-scientists can understand. That’s the sign of a leader who has spent years learning to communicate complex messages to different audiences.
For example, when I asked Budil to explain the scientific community’s excitement about an experiment that lasted just 100 trillionth of a second, she responded with a rhetorical device that great communicators use to explain abstract ideas—the analogy.
“I like to use the analogy of trying to light a match,” Budil explained.
“Let’s say the goal of lighting a match is to burn up the entire match. If you strike it just right, it will flare up, and a flame will be created that will eventually burn up the entire match. Sometimes, you get a little flare, and the match goes out. That’s what happened here. The goal for ignition and sustained burn is to consume the whole match. We sparked the match and had a moment of flame. It’s a starting point. We are on the threshold of ignition. When we can sustain that burn a little longer, the numbers will be more eye-popping.”
According to the New York Times, the historic achievements at NIF are turning skeptics into believers. For decades, many experts didn’t believe that fusion ignition was possible, but achieving the impossible is what motivated Budil to join the Lab as a graduate student in 1987. “If the problem is big enough, complex enough, and challenging enough, we’re the people you call,” Budil says.