Scientists announced Tuesday that they have for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it.

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California started a reaction that produced about 1.5 times more energy than was contained in the light used to produce it.

There are decades more to wait before fusion could one day — maybe — be used to produce electricity in the real world. But the promise of fusion is enticing. If harnessed, it could produce nearly limitless, carbon-free energy to supply humanity’s electricity needs without raising global temperatures and worsening climate change.

Fusion ignition is “one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,″ Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said, adding that the breakthrough “will go down in the history books.”

Appearing with Granholm, White House science adviser Arati Prabhakar called the fusion ignition achieved Dec. 5 “a tremendous example of what perseverance really can achieve” and “an engineering marvel beyond belief.”

The U.S. government charged Samuel Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, with a host of financial crimes on Tuesday, alleging he intentionally deceived customers and investors to enrich himself and others while playing a central role in the company’s multibillion-dollar collapse.

Federal prosecutors said Bankman-Fried devised “a scheme and artifice to defraud” FTX’s customers and investors beginning in 2019, the year it was founded.

He illegally diverted their money to cover expenses, debts, and risky trades at the crypto hedge fund he started in 2017, Alameda Research, and to make lavish real estate purchases and large political donations, prosecutors said in a 13-page indictment.

Bankman-Fried was arrested Monday in the Bahamas at the request of the U.S. government and was charged with eight criminal violations, ranging from wire fraud to money laundering to conspiracy to committing fraud.

If convicted of all the charges, Bankman-Fried could face decades in jail.

On Tuesday afternoon, President Joe Biden signed gay marriage legislation into law in a joyful ceremony that was tempered by the backdrop of an ongoing conservative backlash over gender issues.

“This law and the love it defends strike a blow against hate in all its forms,” Biden said on the South Lawn of the White House. “And that’s why this law matters to every single American.”

Lawmakers from both parties attended Tuesday’s ceremony, reflecting the growing acceptance of same-sex unions, once among the country’s most contentious issues.

The new law is intended to safeguard gay marriages if the U.S. Supreme Court ever reverses Obergefell v. Hodges, its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex unions nationwide.

The new law also protects interracial marriages.

In 1967, the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia struck down laws in 16 states barring interracial marriage.

Krista Boaz can be reached at boaz4296@stthomas.edu.