Google, in partnership with Tri Alpha Energy, has broken new ground in the quest for viable nuclear fusion energy.

Combining atoms at extreme temperatures to release staggering amounts of energy from their fusion has always been rife with prohibitive challenges. Chief among them is the complex engineering required to suspend the plasma itself. In a process where even microscopic changes have exponential consequences, there is quite literally no room for error. Google Accelerated Science Team Senior Staff Software Engineer Ted Baltz broke the concept down in a blog post on July 25:

Google is always interested in solving complex engineering problems, and few are more complex than fusion. Physicists have been trying since the 1950s to control the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium, which is the same process that powers the Sun. The key to harnessing this power is to confine hydrogen plasmas for long enough to get more energy out from fusion reactions than was put in. This point is called “breakeven.” If it works, it would represent a technological breakthrough, and could provide an abundant source of zero-carbon energy.

Google and Tri Alpha Energy have raised half a billion dollars toward making this level of nuclear fusion a reality. Now, with the aid of what they have dubbed the Optometrist Algorithm, they are closer than ever to world-altering success.

At its most essential, the revolutionary algorithm combines the nuance of human judgment with technology’s power and precision. Baltz said that the project was “beyond what we know how to do, even with Google-scale computer resources.” To solve it, they needed to “[boil] the problem down to ‘let’s find plasma behaviours that an expert human plasma physicist thinks are interesting, and let’s not break the machine when we’re doing it.’” He described it as “a classic case of humans and computers doing a better job together than either could have separately.”

With Google’s help, Tri Alpha Energy’s C2-U machine reduces month-long operations to a matter of hours. But that was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg: Employing the Optometrist Algorithm enabled the discovery of entirely new ways to operate the plasma, resulting in a monumental 50% reduction in lost energy. The project’s findings were published in the Scientific Reports journal on July 25.

Tri Alpha Energy President and CTO Michl Binderbauer praised the breakthrough, asserting that “results like this might take years to solve without the power of advanced computation.” With the aid of former US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Tri Alpha Energy aims to produce nuclear fusion energy within the decade.

Tokamak Energy Chief David Kingham lauded Google and Tri Alpha Energy’s efforts, saying “While publicly funded laboratories excel at fundamental research, the private sector can innovate and adopt new technologies much more rapidly.” To his own credit, Tokamak Energy achieved a world-first advancement earlier this year, with the first production of plasma in a new reactor.

The advent of efficient nuclear fusion would irreversibly alter our world. A safe, clean, and limitless supply of power would reshape everything about our environment, economy, and interactions on the world stage. It is a tantalizing idea, and we are closer than ever before. And even though we could still be many years from viable commercial employment of the technology, breakthroughs like this push us ever faster toward a world in which constant conflict does not define our advancement.

Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.