Affordable plasma cutters are becoming a popular step up from an angle grinder for cutting sheet metal in the home workshop, but cutting long straight lines can be laborious and less than accurate.

Imagine trying to trap a miniature star inside a machine without letting it touch the walls or burn itself out. This is the ...

A research group has demonstrated that spontaneously excited plasma waves may be the solution to a long-associated problem with magnetic nozzle plasma thrusters, turning conventional thinking on its ...

Magnetic nozzle plasma thrusters are thought of as the future of space travel. But one problem has hampered their development -- plasma detachment. A recent study has shown that spontaneously excited ...

Nuclear fusion comes in all shapes and sizes, and while donut-shaped tokamaks are the most common, many companies and universities are investigating other ways to bring star power in cheaper and more ...

A new spin on the magnetic compression of plasmas could improve materials science, nuclear fusion research, X-ray generation and laboratory astrophysics. A new spin on the magnetic compression of ...

A research group led by Associate Professor Masahiro Kobayashi of the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) has discovered that in the Large Helical Device (LHD), when fluctuations are ...