"Invented" 3 billion years ago, photosynthesis was a great revolution in the biosphere, enabling plants, algae and certain bacteria to transform solar energy into chemical energy. This process provided the terrestrial atmosphere with oxygen - non-existent at the origin - without which the expansion of life and the birth of higher organisms would have been impossible. Again, it is the Sun and its intimate physics that gave researchers the idea of copying its mode of functioning in order to place at the disposal of humans an energy that is inexhaustible, reliable and not very polluting: thermonuclear fusion, one of the major technological and human challenges of the 21st century |
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