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Exclusive: Laser-fusion facility heads back to the drawing board

US scientists evaluate their options after failing to replicate record-setting experiment from 2021.
  1. Jeff Tollefson
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Nearly one year ago, scientists at the world’s largest laser-fusion facility announced a landmark achievement: it had shattered all records and produced, if only for a fraction of a second, an energetic fusion reaction of the kind that powers stars and thermonuclear weapons. Yet efforts to replicate that experiment have fallen short. Nature has learnt that, earlier this year, researchers at the California facility changed direction, moving to rethink their experimental design.

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Nature 608, 20-21 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02022-1

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