A tokamak in France set a new record in fusion plasma by encasing its reaction in tungsten, a heat-resistant metal that allows physicists to sustain hot plasmas for longer, and at higher energies and densities than carbon tokamaks.
A team of physicists and engineers at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory built a twisting fusion reactor known as a stellarator that uses permanent magnets, showcasing a potentially cost-effective way of building the powerful machines. Their experiment, called MUSE, relies on 3D-printed and off-the-shelf parts.
Diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring material on Earth, but a supercomputer just modeled stuff that’s even harder. Called a ‘super-diamond,’ the theoretical material could exist beyond our planet—and maybe, one day, be created here on Earth.
A UK-based nuclear fusion collaboration just produced a record amount of energy, a refreshing dose of good news in humankind’s quest for cleaner energy sources. The Joint European Torus facility, or JET, produced just over 69 megajoules of heat.
The Korea Institute of Fusion Energy has installed a new diverter in the KSTAR tokamak, allowing the artificial sun to sustain high-ion temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius for longer.
The biggest experimental nuclear fusion reactor in operation was inaugurated north of Tokyo today, as scientists continue to plug away at making nuclear fusion a viable source of the world’s energy.
While the scientific community has been recently focused on the feasibility of an alleged room-temperature superconductor, U.S. scientists revealed this week that they have successfully recreated a pivotal fusion experiment.