{"id":932961,"date":"2026-10-18T20:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T20:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/932961\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T20:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T20:24:10","slug":"a-plasma-donut-hackaday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/932961\/","title":{"rendered":"A Plasma Donut | Hackaday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We know [The Action Lab] always has something hands-on. This time, the video shows a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jXzARHsTBQY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">toroidal plasma<\/a> demo and how it relates to nuclear fusion. Plasma has a high temperature, and if you use physical electrodes to excite the plasma, this high temperature tends to destroy the electrodes. But thanks to the relationship between electricity and magnetism, you can create plasma with an alternating magnetic field instead of physical electrodes.<\/p>\n<p>The actual practical device is a 10 MHz source with a coil and a low-pressure globe full of xenon gas. It looks pretty cool. Of course, the little tabletop demo isn\u2019t strong enough to drive a fusion reaction. But if you scale it up and make some modifications, including using hydrogen, you get a <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2025\/04\/22\/whats-sixty-feet-across-and-superconducting\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tokamak<\/a> reactor.<\/p>\n<p>The problem, of course, is that current reactors need more energy to operate than they produce. But we keep hearing that <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2020\/01\/23\/nuclear-fusion-at-100-the-hidden-race-for-energy-supremacy\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">nuclear fusion is right around the corner<\/a>. One day, that\u2019ll probably be true.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you can build <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2022\/10\/27\/plasma-channel-shows-off-a-remarkably-stylish-fusor\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">your own fusion device<\/a>. Just don\u2019t expect to generate net power.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We know [The Action Lab] always has something hands-on. This time, the video shows a toroidal plasma demo&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[64,63,292,128],"class_list":["post-932961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}