Space & Physics
Fusion Energy: The quest for unlimited power
The potential benefits of fusion energy are enormous. It could provide a nearly limitless supply of energy, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and help combat climate change

Imagine a world with a virtually unlimited source of clean energy that could power our cities, industries, and homes without the harmful emissions and environmental impacts of fossil fuels. This isn’t science fiction—it’s the promise of fusion energy. But what exactly is fusion energy, and how close are we to making it a reality?
Nuclear fusion involves combining light elements, such as hydrogen, to form heavier elements, releasing a significant burst of energy in the process. This process, which powers the heat and light of the Sun and other stars, is praised for its potential as a sustainable, low-carbon energy source.
This process contrasts with the nuclear fission process used in nuclear power plants, where heavy atomic nuclei are split into lighter ones. But this is fraught with radioactive waste and safety concerns.
The road to practical fusion energy is steep and fraught with challenges. The foremost obstacle is achieving and maintaining the extremely high temperatures and pressures required for fusion. Similar to those at the Sun’s core, these conditions are necessary to overcome the electrostatic forces that repel the positively charged atomic nuclei. For decades, scientists have experimented with different methods to achieve these conditions. The two primary approaches are magnetic confinement and inertial confinement.
Magnetic confinement, as seen in the tokamak design, employs powerful magnetic fields to contain hot plasma within a doughnut-shaped chamber. Inertial confinement, on the other hand, involves compressing a small pellet of fusion fuel with intense laser beams to achieve the conditions for fusion. Both methods have seen significant advancements but are yet to reach the break-even point, where the energy output from fusion equals the energy input required to sustain the reaction. However, recent breakthroughs have brought us closer than ever to this elusive goal.
The primary fuel for nuclear fusion is deuterium and tritium. Deuterium and tritium are isotopes of hydrogen, the universe’s most abundant element. Isotopes are members of a family of elements that all have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. While all isotopes of hydrogen have one proton, deuterium has one neutron, and tritium has two, so their ion masses are heavier than those of protium, the isotope of hydrogen with no neutrons. Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, while tritium can be bred from lithium. When deuterium and tritium fuse, they form a helium atom, which has two protons and two neutrons, and release an energetic neutron. These energetic neutrons could serve as the foundation for generating energy in future fusion power plants.
Power plants today generate electricity using fossil fuels, nuclear fission, or renewable sources like wind or water. Regardless of the energy source, these plants convert mechanical power, such as the rotation of a turbine, into electrical power. In a coal-fired steam station, coal combustion turns water into steam, which then drives turbine generators to produce electricity.
The tokamak is an experimental machine designed to harness fusion energy. Inside a tokamak, the energy produced through atomic fusion is absorbed as heat by the vessel’s walls. Similar to conventional power plants, a fusion power plant will use this heat to produce steam, which then generates electricity via turbines and generators.
The international ITER project in France is the largest and most ambitious tokamak experiment to date. ITER aims to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy
At the core of a tokamak is a doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber. Under extreme heat and pressure inside this chamber, gaseous hydrogen fuel becomes plasma, creating an environment where hydrogen atoms can fuse and release energy. The plasma’s charged particles are controlled and shaped by large magnetic coils surrounding the vessel. This property allows physicists to confine the hot plasma away from the vessel walls. The term “tokamak” is derived from a Russian acronym for “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils.”

Fusion energy scientists consider tokamaks to be the leading plasma confinement design for future fusion power plants. In a tokamak, magnetic field coils confine plasma particles, enabling the plasma to reach the conditions necessary for fusion.
The international ITER project in France is the largest and most ambitious tokamak experiment to date. ITER aims to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy. It’s a collaboration involving 35 countries, including India, and is expected to produce first plasma in the coming years.
The primary objective of ITER is to investigate and demonstrate burning plasmas—plasmas where the energy from helium nuclei produced by fusion reactions is sufficient to maintain the plasma’s temperature, reducing or eliminating the need for external heating. ITER will also test the feasibility and integration of essential fusion reactor technologies, such as superconducting magnets, remote maintenance, and systems for exhausting power from the plasma. Additionally, it will validate tritium breeding module concepts that could enable tritium self-sufficiency in future reactors.
ITER made headlines just last year when it achieved a major milestone: the successful installation of its first-of-a-kind superconducting magnet system. This system is crucial for creating the powerful magnetic fields needed to contain the superheated plasma. This achievement brings us one step closer to achieving sustained fusion reactions.
On October 3, 2023, the Joint European Torus (JET) project in Oxford produced power for five seconds, resulting in a “ground-breaking record” of 69 megajoules of power. That energy was generated using only 0.2 milligrams of fuel.
An alternative method is inertial confinement fusion, where a compact fusion fuel pellet is compressed by high-powered lasers. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the United States is leading the way in this research. On December 5, 2022, the National Ignition Facility (NIF), located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, directed a series of lasers to emit 2.05 megajoules of energy towards a small cylinder containing a frozen pellet of deuterium and tritium, which are denser variants of hydrogen. The pellet underwent compression, resulting in the generation of temperatures and pressures of sufficient magnitude to induce fusion of the hydrogen contained inside it. During an extremely brief ignition, the merging atomic nuclei discharged 3.15 megajoules of energy, surpassing the amount of energy necessary to heat the pellet by approximately 50 percent. This stage is crucial in the journey towards the practical realisation of fusion energy production.
On October 3, 2023, the Joint European Torus (JET) project in Oxford produced power for five seconds, resulting in a “ground-breaking record” of 69 megajoules of power. That energy was generated using only 0.2 milligrams of fuel. In addition, many private companies are making waves in the fusion energy scene.
While these achievements are remarkable, there are still many technical hurdles to overcome. We need to improve the efficiency and durability of fusion reactors, develop materials that can withstand the extreme conditions inside them, and create systems for safely handling and breeding tritium.
Despite these challenges, the potential benefits of fusion energy are enormous. It could provide a nearly limitless supply of energy, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and help combat climate change. Imagine a world where energy is abundant, clean, and available to all—fusion energy could make this vision a reality. As we look to the future, the quest for fusion energy represents one of the greatest scientific and engineering challenges of our time. It’s a testament to human ingenuity and our unwavering determination to solve the world’s most pressing problems.
Space & Physics
New double-slit experiment proves Einstein’s predictions were off the mark
Results from an idealized version of the Young double-slit experiment has upheld key predictions from quantum theory.

- MIT physicists perform the most idealized double-slit experiment to date, using individual atoms as slits.
- Experiment confirms the quantum duality of light: light behaves as both a particle and a wave, but both behaviors can’t be observed simultaneously.
- Findings disprove Albert Einstein’s century-old prediction regarding detecting a photon’s path alongside its wave nature.
In a study published in Physical Reviews Letters on July 22, researchers at MIT have realized an idealized version of the famous double-slit experiment in quantum physics yet.
The double-slit experiment—first devised in 1801 by the British physicist Thomas Young—remains a perplexing aspect of reality. Light waves passing through two slits, form interference patterns on a wall placed behind. But this phenomenon is at odds with the fact light also behaves as particles. The contradiction has lent itself to a paradox, which sits at the foundation of quantum mechanics. It has sparked a historic scientific duel nearly a century ago, between physics heavyweights Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. The study’s findings have now settled the decades-old debate, showing Einstein’s predictions were off the mark.
Einstein had suggested that by detecting the force exerted when a photon passes through a slit—a nudge akin to a bird brushing past a leaf—scientists could witness both light’s wave and particle properties at once. Bohr countered with the argument that observing a photon’s path would inevitably erase its wave-like interference pattern, a tenet since embraced by quantum theory.
The MIT team stripped the experiment to its purest quantum elements. Using arrays of ultracold atoms as their slits and weak light beams to ensure only one photon scattered per atom, they tuned the quantum states of each atom to control the information gained about a photon’s journey. Every increase in “which-path” information reduced the visibility of the light’s interference pattern, flawlessly matching quantum theory and further debunking Einstein’s proposal.
“Einstein and Bohr would have never thought that this is possible, to perform such an experiment with single atoms and single photons,” study senior author and Nobel laureate, Wolfgang Ketterle, stated in a press release. “What we have done is an idealized Gedanken (thought) experiment.”
In a particularly stunning twist, Ketterle’s group also disproved the necessity of a physical “spring”—a fixture in Einstein’s original analogy—by holding their atomic lattice not with springs, but with light. When they briefly released the atoms, effectively making the slits “float” in space, the same quantum results persisted. “In many descriptions, the springs play a major role. But we show, no, the springs do not matter here; what matters is only the fuzziness of the atoms,” commented MIT researcher Vitaly Fedoseev in a media statement. “Therefore, one has to use a more profound description, which uses quantum correlations between photons and atoms.”
The paper arrives as the world prepares for 2025’s International Year of Quantum Science and Technology — marking 100 years since the birth of quantum mechanics. Yoo Kyung Lee, a fellow co-author, noted in a media statement, “It’s a wonderful coincidence that we could help clarify this historic controversy in the same year we celebrate quantum physics.”
Space & Physics
Researchers Uncover New Way to Measure Hidden Quantum Interactions in Materials

A team of MIT scientists has developed a theory-guided strategy to directly measure an elusive quantum property in semiconductors — the electron-phonon interaction — using an often-ignored effect in neutron scattering.
Their approach, published this week in Materials Today Physics, reinterprets an interference effect, typically considered a nuisance in experiments, as a valuable signal. This enables researchers to probe electron-phonon interactions — a key factor influencing a material’s thermal, electrical, and optical behaviour — which until now have been extremely difficult to measure directly.
“Rather than discovering new spectroscopy techniques by pure accident, we can use theory to justify and inform the design of our experiments and our physical equipment,” said Mingda Li, senior author and associate professor at MIT, in a media statement.
By engineering the interference between nuclear and magnetic interactions during neutron scattering, the team demonstrated that the resulting signal is directly proportional to the electron-phonon coupling strength.
“Being able to directly measure the electron-phonon interaction opens the door to many new possibilities,” said MIT graduate student Artittaya Boonkird.
While the current setup produced a weak signal, the findings lay the groundwork for next-generation experiments at more powerful facilities like Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s proposed Second Target Station. The team sees this as a shift in materials science — using theoretical insights to unlock previously “invisible” properties for a range of advanced technologies, from quantum computing to medical devices.
Space & Physics
Dormant Black Holes Revealed in Dusty Galaxies Through Star-Shredding Events

In a major discovery, astronomers at MIT, Columbia University, and other institutions have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to uncover hidden black holes in dusty galaxies that violently “wake up” only when an unsuspecting star wanders too close.
The new study, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, marks the first time JWST has captured clear signatures of tidal disruption events (TDEs) — catastrophic episodes where a star is torn apart by a galaxy’s central black hole, emitting a dramatic burst of energy.
“These are the first JWST observations of tidal disruption events, and they look nothing like what we’ve ever seen before,” said lead author Megan Masterson, a graduate student at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “We’ve learned these are indeed powered by black hole accretion, and they don’t look like environments around normal active black holes.”
Until now, nearly all TDEs detected since the 1990s were found in relatively dust-free galaxies using X-ray or optical telescopes. However, researchers suspected many more events remained hidden behind thick clouds of galactic dust. JWST’s powerful infrared vision has finally confirmed their hunch.
By analyzing four galaxies previously flagged as likely TDE candidates, the team detected distinct infrared fingerprints of black hole accretion — the process of material spiraling into a black hole, producing intense radiation. These signatures, invisible to optical telescopes, revealed that all four events stemmed not from persistently active black holes but dormant ones, roused only when a passing star came too close.
“There’s nothing else in the universe that can excite this gas to these energies, except for black hole accretion,” Masterson noted.
Among the four signals studied was the closest TDE ever detected, located 130 million light-years away. Another showed an initial optical flash that scientists had earlier suspected to be a supernova. JWST’s readings helped clarify the true cause.
“These four signals were as close as we could get to a sure thing,” said Masterson. “But the JWST data helped us say definitively these are bonafide TDEs.”
To determine whether the central black holes were inherently active or momentarily triggered by a star’s disruption, the team also mapped the dust patterns around them. Unlike the thick, donut-shaped clouds typical of active galaxies, these dusty environments appeared markedly different — further confirming the black holes were usually dormant.
“Together, these observations say the only thing these flares could be are TDEs,” Masterson said in a media statement.
The findings not only validate JWST’s unprecedented ability to study hidden cosmic phenomena but also open new pathways for understanding black holes that lurk quietly in dusty galactic centers — until they strike.
With future observations planned using JWST, NEOWISE, and other infrared tools, the team hopes to catalog many more such events. These cosmic feeding frenzies, they say, could unlock key clues about black hole mass, spin, and the very nature of their environments.
“The actual process of a black hole gobbling down all that stellar material takes a long time,” Masterson added. “And hopefully we can start to probe how long that process takes and what that environment looks like. No one knows because we just started discovering and studying these events.”
-
Society5 months ago
Starliner crew challenge rhetoric, says they were never “stranded”
-
Space & Physics4 months ago
Could dark energy be a trick played by time?
-
Earth5 months ago
How IIT Kanpur is Paving the Way for a Solar-Powered Future in India’s Energy Transition
-
Space & Physics4 months ago
Sunita Williams aged less in space due to time dilation
-
Women In Science4 months ago
Neena Gupta: Shaping the Future of Algebraic Geometry
-
Learning & Teaching5 months ago
Canine Cognitive Abilities: Memory, Intelligence, and Human Interaction
-
Society6 months ago
Sustainable Farming: The Microgreens Model from Kerala, South India
-
Earth3 months ago
122 Forests, 3.2 Million Trees: How One Man Built the World’s Largest Miyawaki Forest