March 8, 2006
The Department's Sandia National Laboratories announces that its Z machine has produced plasmas that exceed temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin-hotter than the interiors of stars. The unexpectedly hot output, if its cause were understood and harnessed, could eventually mean that smaller, less costly nuclear fusion plants would produce the same amount of energy as larger plants. The phenomena also may explain how astrophysical entities like solar flares maintain their extreme temperatures.