In 2023, energy from nuclear fusion became the topic du jour among some very influential people. Just weeks before COP28, the world’s preeminent climate conference, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said of fusion, “For the first time, all the pieces of the puzzle are there: the physics, the policy drivers, and the investment.”

His enthusiasm was matched at COP28 when John Kerry announced a call to action for engagement on fusion energy, and a host of panels circled in on the topic. All this for a technology generally accepted even a few years ago to be “not what they’re cracked up to be.” So what changed?

A year ago, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) accomplished a goal decades in the making: The California-based site sparked a fusion reaction that generated more energy than it put in. Over the past year, NIF has repeated its energy gain achievement multiple times. Other fusion facilities are helping scientists plan for even bigger experiments to come. And, in many ways, planning for fusion power plants has already begun.

Combined, these advances have given fusion scientists reason to be more optimistic than ever. “For me… it’s this momentum that we feel everywhere in the world at the moment, towards a fusion power plant,” says Joëlle Mailloux, fusion scientist at the U.K. Atomic Energy Agency. She is not alone in this thinking.

On July 21, 1999, Steve Jobs stood on stage in front of a packed Macworld Expo New York audience and announced a video game that would go on to influence the entire games industry and turn Apple into a gaming powerhouse.

Half of that promise turned out to be true. The first-person shooter that Jobs revealed did change the course of video game history — but not for Apple. Instead, Microsoft purchased the game’s developer a year later, snatching up the title for the launch of the original Xbox in 2001.

The game Microsoft “stole” from Jobs and Apple was called Halo: Combat Evolved, and the developer was Bungie, a pioneering game studio for the Mac. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.