In 2022, physicist Tammy Ma and the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a scientific breakthrough decades in the making: fusion ignition, or the combining of two atoms to generate more energy out of a reaction than was put in — recreating on Earth the same process that powers the Sun. She explains how they used a giant laser ...

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is the world's largest and most powerful laser system. The NIF is built to create very extreme states of matter - similar to those found in the interiors of stars and planets. At NIF, scientists and engineers are working hard to demonstrate sustainable fusi...