{"id":158446,"date":"2026-02-10T14:55:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T14:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/158446\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T14:55:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T14:55:18","slug":"dallas-12-year-old-achieves-nuclear-fusion-after-four-years-of-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/158446\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas 12-year-old achieves nuclear fusion after four years of effort"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Feb. 10 (UPI) &#8212; A 12-year-old Dallas student&#8217;s four-year-long science project may have resulted in his becoming the youngest person to ever achieve nuclear fusion.<\/p>\n<p>Aiden McMillan, a Dallas Independent School District seventh-grader, said he started work on his ambitious project when he was just 8 years old, and spent the first two years studying nuclear physics concepts before building his first prototypes.\n<\/p>\n<p>He said it took some work to ensure his mother was comfortable with his tinkering.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There were some alarm bells with my mom, yes, she was like, &#8216; Whoa, whoa, whoa, take a step back, tell me exactly what could go wrong, and how it could go wrong and make sure it doesn&#8217;t go wrong,'&#8221; McMillan<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcdfw.com\/news\/local\/young-dallas-scientist-builds-nuclear-fusion-machine-eyes-guinness-record\/3981178\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"> told NBC DFW.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The project concluded with McMillan achieving nuclear fusion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We got neutrons, yeah,&#8221; McMillan said. &#8220;Kind of tearing up about it cause it was like, hard to describe. It was like the end of a long, long journey.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>McMillan is now applying to Guinness World Records to be recognized as the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.guinnessworldrecords.com\/world-records\/596440-youngest-person-to-achieve-nuclear-fusion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">record is currently held<\/a> by Jackson Oswalt, a Tennessee native who successfully achieved nuclear fusion just hours before his 13th birthday in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feb. 10 (UPI) &#8212; A 12-year-old Dallas student&#8217;s four-year-long science project may have resulted in his becoming the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,4892,4890,4891],"class_list":["post-158446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-funny","tag-odd","tag-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}