If you want to catch a firefly, any old glass jar will do. But when you're trying to bottle a star--the goal of fusion energy research--the bottle needs to be very special. A tokamak is one type of fusion bottle, capable of holding extremely hot plasma (10 times hotter than the sun) and keeping it stable while harvesting the prodigious amounts of energy produced in the fusion process. Of course, the trick is to keep the hot stuff in. And this is a complicated task.
If you want to catch a firefly, any old glass jar will do. But when you're trying to bottle a star--the goal of fusion energy research--the bottle needs to be very special. A tokamak is one type of fusion bottle, capable of holding extremely hot plasma (10 times hotter than the sun) and keeping it stable while harvesting the prodigious amounts of energy produced in the fusion process. Of course, the trick is to keep the hot stuff in. And this is a complicated task.
Share this Article
Recommended