Another groundbreaking news coming from a teenager. A 13 yo boy from Lancashire successfully carried nuclear fusion, becoming the youngest person in history, who have made such an incredible achievement. The project was fully supported by the Penwortham Priory Academy, the school which the boy attended.
Jamie Edwards is the hero of the week. All he needed was his ambition and competitive spirit that proved to be enough for him to carry on what everyone thought is an impossible task. In a matter of half a year, the boy was able to recreate the process known as ‘inertial electrostatic confinement‘, where high voltage is sent through gas to generate super hot tiny pockets. Here the hydrogen atoms collide to produce helium, and their mass is converted to energy.
At first, no one believed that Jamie will be able to do this. He requested funding from various research facilities, but with no success. His teachers were also quite skeptical at first and rightfully worried that he might burn down the school facility. Thankfully in the end, after quite a bit of persuasion, the Priory head of the school, Jim Hourigan, agreed to direct £2,000 to the project.
The boy then acquired all needed equipment from home and abroad, and using the science lab facility at his school, he worked on his goal whenever he had spare time between classes or after school. With the help of various open source websites and his friend George Barker, the boy managed to reach his goal just a few days before he turned 14. This was particularly important, since the spot of the youngest person to have ever created nuclear fusion was currently occupied by Taylor Wilson, a 14-year-old hero. To take over the first place, the only thing left in front of Jamie is the verification his effort by the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium.
Perfecting nuclear fusion, has been a main goal of many research teams over the years. Now that scientists from NIF were finally able to generate more energy than they put into it, a process called ignition, nuclear fusion is back on the radar as a very promising mean for generating renewable energy. And with such incredible young minds around, it might well be that soon there is a real clean energy revolution.
Image (c) BBC
