Teen Built Nuclear Device in His Basement.

Thiago Olson, 17 year-old high school student, is called "the mad scientist" by his friends for good reason: he created a nuclear fusion reactor in his home.

In the basement of his parents' Oakland Township home, tucked away in an area most aren't privy to see, Thiago is exhausting his love of physics on a project that has taken him more than two years and 1,000 hours to research and build -- a large, intricate machine that , on a small scale, creates nuclear fusion.

Link - via Make

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Hey - has anyone of authentic credentials investigated the contraption? It is possible that the small ball of lightthat appears to be a fusion reaction is merely the plasma generated by the gas in a vacuum in the presence of high voltage input into the device. These 'devices' can be purchased in Spencers gifts in the mall,
in this case the plasma generated arcs to the outside of the ring for a cool effect. Remember the Borg on startrek and the crazy sleep device they plug into? Well, with some magnetics applied, plasma does some really cool things.

Now, consider the Japanese,(on Discovery channel several years ago) they have created a similar device that creates a gigantic plasma ball in the center of a highly pressurized containment sphere that if could be made self sustaining, would create essentially a mini sun like the one above your head. The heat generated by the plasma ball could be harnessed into usable energy.

The trick is to have left over energy after some energy is used to power the fusion device itself. I may be wrong, the Japanese device may have been a pure vacuum, i can't remember.

At any rate, it takes a very expensive lab environment to make atomic measurements to reveal that fusion has occured with any given set of gas molecules.

Plasma is the visable electrification of helium gas molecules or any other gas that is easily electified.
Just because the molecules hover in a ball does not mean its fusion.

The Japanese fusion device uses partical accelerators to set off the fusion chain reaction which in turn creats a large plasma ball(like the size of a large beach ball) in a very large containment device. The amount of electomagnetic energy required is enormous
to contain and sustain the fusion plasma ball.

If they were successful, we would have endless supply of safe nuclear energy.

I wrote this in general terms.