Major scientific news out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this week:
It was a moment three years in the making, based on intensive research and design work: On Sept. 5, for the first time, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet was ramped up to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth. That successful demonstration helps resolve the greatest uncertainty in the quest to build the world's first fusion power plant that can produce more power than it consumes...
Developing the new magnet is seen as the greatest technological hurdle to making that happen; its successful operation now opens the door to demonstrating fusion in a lab on Earth, which has been pursued for decades with limited progress. With the magnet technology now successfully demonstrated, the MIT-CFS collaboration is on track to build the world's first fusion device that can create and confine a plasma that produces more energy than it consumes. That demonstration device, called SPARC, is targeted for completion in 2025.
The development of this kind of energy source is immensely encouraging. Whether or not you put much stock in "climate change" fears, the simple truth of the matter is that fossil fuels are inevitably going to run out one day—not anytime soon, but eventually.
Having what one MIT scientists calls the "nearly unlimited resource" of water-based fusion energy would solve that problem in a heartbeat. Here's to hoping its development continues successfully.
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