At the end of last year, Germany switched on a new type of massive nuclear fusion reactor for the first time, and it was successfully able to contain a scorching hot blob of helium plasma.
But since then, there's been a big question - is the device working the way it's supposed to? That's pretty crucial when you're talking about a machine that could potentially maintain controlled nuclear fusion reactions one day, and thankfully, the answer is yes.
A team of researchers from the US and Germany have now confirmed that the Wendelstein 7-X (W 7-X) stellerator is producing the super-strong, twisty, 3D magnetic fields that its design predicted, with "unprecedented accuracy". The researchers found an error rate less than one in 100,000.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 07 2016, @10:18AM
No, it was to measure, using nothing more than a beam of electrons, whether the magnetic field had the right properties such that they should expect to maintain containment of a plasma.
They've reached the "looks like one bit of it should work" stage.
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