Fusion is the natural process that heats the Sun and all other stars, in which a huge amount of energy is produced by the fusion of light atoms, such as those in hydrogen, into heavier elements like helium. Although this type of energy production has been long recognized as totally carbon- and by-product-free and the source atoms in hydrogen are abundant in the water on Earth, replicating fusion energy generation on Earth has long been a challenge. That’s because this fusion needs to take place at extremely high temperatures that create hot plasma, and because researchers have struggled to obtain more energy from those plasmas than the energy input to run them. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may have found a way to fast track the development of fusion energy, and a working pilot plant could be less than 15 years away. The project has attracted […]