A German nuclear fusion experiment managed to produce a super-hot gas that scientists hope will eventually lead to the production of clean and cheap energy.
The helium plasma, a cloud of charged particles, lasted a split second and reached about a million degrees Celsius.
The fact was received as a huge advance in the main reactor ( stellarator ) of the Max Planck, a camera whose design is different from fusion devices tokamak used elsewhere.
The sun’s energy is generated by fusion.
Nuclear fusion is also the principle behind the most powerful weapons in the world. Thermonuclear weapons as the hydrogen bomb
The world Physics is in a global race to create devices for create energy by nuclear fusion stably.
To find a formula that not only mimics the sun, but that provide abundant energy without the volumes of toxic waste generated by fission, the splitting of the atom.
The German team, based in Greifswald in northeastern Germany, intends in the future to heat the core of hydrogen to a hundred million degrees , the condition for the merger of the solar interior.
They will use deuterium, a heavier isotope.
The plasma stellarator was created Thursday from 10 mg of helium and using a laser microwave, a complex combination of magnets.
The Max Planck Institute calls your machine Wendelstein 7-X.
The project started nine years ago and so far cost more than US $ 1,100 million.
The main nuclear fusion project of the European Union is called Iter in Cadarache, southern France, but it will not be released until 2020.
This is a controversial idea that has already spent more than US $ 11,000 million.
Iter will be a disposito tokamak , a Russian word that refers to a camera shaped magnetic ring.
Scientists have over 50 years working in the merger , but the extreme temperatures required and the difficulty of controlling the plasma, make progress it is slow.
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