![]() “Fusion is probably the greatest technical challenge humanity has ever taken on,” says Arthur Turrell, whose book The Star Builders charts the decades-long effort by engineers, physicists and mathematicians to achieve what some still believe is impossible. The potential of fusion energy, first pioneered by the Soviet Union, has tantalised scientists for decades but has always seemed just out of reach. Those in the room at First Light Fusion, in a business park outside Oxford, had just witnessed another hopeful step in a 60-year mission to answer one of science’s most complex problems: how to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun to generate clean, limitless electricity on Earth. “Thank God,” exclaims one of the technicians, after reviewing a video playback of the impact of the scientific artillery. The slightest rotation risks derailing the carefully calibrated physics. The projectile needs to hit its mark perfectly flush. On the monitors the scientists are checking the next stage, when the projectile slams into the target-a small transparent block carefully designed to amplify the force of the collision. Next door, 3 kilograms of gunpowder has compressed 1,500 liters of hydrogen to 10,000 times atmospheric pressure, launching a projectile down the 9-meter barrel of a two-stage light gas gun at a speed of 6.5 kilometers per second, about 10 times faster than a bullet from a rifle. “Ready,” says the person running the test. “Go and make the gun dangerous,” one of them tells a technician, who slips into an adjacent chamber. Half a dozen scientists sit behind computer screens, flicking between panels as they make last-minute checks.
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