The Hottest Place in the Solar System Wasn’t a Star, it was a French Fusion Reactor
For five blistering seconds, a machine on Earth outshone the Sun. Not metaphorically…I mean actually literally.
Inside a steel-and-magnet-lined chamber in southern France, hydrogen atoms collided with enough fury to out-heat the core of our own star. The result was, for a few moments, the hottest place in the entire solar system.
And if you’re like me, that sentence alone makes your spine tingle. Not sure if it’s in a superhero or super villain way though, just being honest.
Fusion: The Fire We Keep Trying to Hold
Fusion is the reaction that makes stars shine brightly in the sky and wink at us from millions of miles away, it’s basically atoms smashing together so hard they release a ton of energy.
It’s what made the gold on your ring and the iron in your blood. We are the stars, in the most of romantic ways.
Fusion is what lit the first stars in the universe, and what will light the last. My libra balance-loving-self just preens in joy at this beautiful symmetry.
For decades now, scientists have been trying to recreate it without blowing us all up (yes, you read that correctly, I mean, what can go wrong with starting our own mini sun on the planet?). The goal has always been to create a clean, safe, practically limitless source of power. No carbon emissions, no radioactive waste, just plasma hotter than hell and a dream we can’t let go of.
And this past week, in a facility near Cadarache, France…we got closer.
(Also, this image is AI generated, it’s not real!)
What Actually Happened in France?
Scientists at the WEST Tokamak reactor (a fusion research device) pushed plasma temperatures beyond 150 million degrees Celsius, which is ten times hotter than the core of the Sun.
Which is absolutely crazy.
That plasma held steady for five seconds. Five seconds might not sound like a lot, but in fusion, that’s an eternity.
To put it in perspective, the machine essentially became the hottest known place in the solar system.
And it didn’t melt or do something dramatic like end all of human-kind, that alone is a miracle.
This marks one of the most promising moments in fusion research to date, which is kinda a big deal.
Okay, But Can This Power My House?
Umm, not yet. But one day, sure, maybe.
The dream is fusion energy powering homes, cities, countries, etc, without the mess that fossil fuels bring. Because, that is a mess.
The idea is that you could extract deuterium from water and use it as fuel, producing energy without the greenhouse gas emissions or long-term radioactive waste!
The WEST experiment didn’t generate electricity, mostly because it’s not connected to the grid.
It didn’t even break even energy-wise…but it brought us a little step closer.
Think of it as lighting the match, now we need to build the fire.
Fusion is more than a solution to the energy crisis, it’s also a key to understanding the universe. If you’ve been here before you know I have an obsession with space, so of course I circled back to that.
Every heavy element in your body came from fusion in the hearts of long-dead stars. The calcium in your bones, the iron in your blood, the gold you wear (one day I’ll be able to afford even more gold when my many many projects take off). All of that though was forged in stellar furnaces and scattered across galaxies by explosions we’ll never see.
(Side note though, that gold, we covered that in this article on quantum alchemy and how magnetars scatter it through space.)
This isn’t just super cool science that keeps me up at night, it’s cosmic ancestry. Fusion lets us reenact our origin story (too super villain of me?)…in a lab.
Want a Tiny Star in Your Living Room?
Okay, not exactly. But if you’re the type who reads this and wants to tinker, there’s a plasma globe kit on Amazon that lets you play with ionized gases in a safe, glowy way. It’s not fusion, but it’s a gentle gateway drug into plasma science.
It also makes a pretty magical nightlight. My dad had one growing up and my sisters and I loved it.
So What Now?
We’re not there yet, obviously. Commercial fusion is still a decade or two out, but each breakthrough like this one in France makes that future feel less like a fantasy and more like a blueprint.
Five seconds may not change the world today, but five seconds is enough to prove we can hold a star.
And that changes everything.
Reads You Might Enjoy:
The Light That Shouldn’t Exist: Discovering Stars in the Darkest Corners
When the Atom Breaks Twice: What Happens When Nuclear Sites Are Bombed
The Earth’s Core Is Leaking Gold: A Hidden Alchemy Beneath Our Feet
When the Sea Turns Against Us: The Sudden Rise of a Flesh-Eating Killer
Japan’s New Plastic Dissolves in Seawater (and Boosts Soil Health)
The Hydrogen Horse: Kawasaki’s Wild Leap into the Future of Movement
The Floating Magnet That Shouldn’t Exist: Why This Levitation Experiment Is Rattling Physics
The Building That Breathes: How Moss Bricks Are Changing the Future of Architecture
