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Ignition: The quest for nuclear fusion

The Slow Newscast

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The Meaning of Life

"It just made me feel very proud to have been a part of it, and very happy for the people who were doing it," says Mike Dunn. The diamond balls are shipped, sometimes hand-carried, to General Atomics, a trusted contractor ever since the Cold War in San Diego. Once they get there, each one is filled with acid, using a glass tube five microns wide, to dissolve and extract the plastic,. Then they loaded onto another plane to live them all, and studied minutely through microscopes for imperfections. And on December 5th, Gordon Branton says the stars aligned.

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