The quest for a much-anticipated energy source may have gotten a boost from a recent discovery at MIT. Nuclear fusion, the process by which light elements are fused into heavier ones, releasing energy along the way, has long bedeviled physicists seeking to harness the mechanism as a source of clean, renewable energy. While the high temperatures necessary for successful fusion are possible, containing the superheated plasma long enough for sustained fusion has been an ongoing problem. The tokamak design, a popular candidate in nuclear fusion research, is shaped like gigantic donut, and uses magnetic fields to contain and compress the plasma, but no model has yet proved capable of the feat. However, a team from MIT's Alcator tokamak has recently discovered a method for improving plasma containment by inducing rotation of the plasma itself using VHF radio waves. Apparently, resonance caused by these waves starts the rotation, which then leads to greater stability and a suppression of turbulent within the plasma.

Read more at http://blogs.physicstoday.org/update/2009/05/spinning-fusion-plasma-to-s...