Pushing the plasma density limit

For decades, researchers have been exploring ways to replicate on Earth the physical process of fusion that occurs naturally in the sun and other stars. Confined by its own strong gravitational field, the sun's burning plasma ...

Engineers create stable plasma ring in open air

For the first time, engineers at Caltech have created a stable ring of plasma in open air—essentially capturing lightning in a bottle, but without the bottle.

Physicists explore a new recipe for heating plasma

In the quest for fusion energy, scientists have spent decades experimenting with ways to make plasma fuel hot and dense enough to generate significant fusion power. At MIT, researchers have focused their attention on using ...

'Perfect liquid' quark-gluon plasma is the most vortical fluid

Particle collisions recreating the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) that filled the early universe reveal that droplets of this primordial soup swirl far faster than any other fluid. The new analysis of data from the Relativistic ...

Proton-nuclei smashups yield clues about 'quark gluon plasma'

Findings from Rice University physicists working at Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are providing new insight about an exotic state of matter called the "quark-gluon plasma" that occurs when protons and neutrons melt.

New finding may explain heat loss in fusion reactors

One of the biggest obstacles to making fusion power practical—and realizing its promise of virtually limitless and relatively clean energy—has been that computer models have been unable to predict how the hot, electrically ...

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