Aiden McMillan, a 12-year-old seventh grader from Dallas, Texas, spent four years building a homemade nuclear fusion device in his family's house and at a local nonprofit workshop, and has now detected the neutrons that prove fusion actually took place inside it.
McMillan's interest in nuclear fusion began when he was just 8 years old. Before touching a single component, he spent two years studying the subject, working through calculations and learning the physics principles behind fusion reactions.
The project took shape partly in a room of the McMillan family's home and partly at Launchpad, a nonprofit organization based in West Dallas. Working as a seventh grade student, McMillan managed to get his equipment running and obtained a signal that serves as the key evidence needed to confirm that fusion had occurred.
How the homemade fusion device works
The device McMillan built is known as a fusor, a type of equipment that uses a high voltage difference inside a vacuum chamber to accelerate deuterium ions toward a grid positioned at its center. When two of these nuclei collide with enough energy, they can fuse together and release a neutron.
Fusors were first developed in the 1960s by the physicist Philo Farnsworth, the same inventor credited with early work on television technology, and building small versions of the device has since become a niche hobby pursued by enthusiasts around the world.
A fusor can produce a visible plasma with a characteristic violet glow even when no fusion reaction is taking place, which is why the plasma alone is not proof that fusion has occurred. Detecting neutrons with the expected energy level is what separates a simple plasma discharge from an actual fusion reaction, and it is this distinction that makes McMillan's result significant within the community of hobbyists who build fusors, since the proof depends on the signal the device produces rather than on its appearance.
Explaining the physics behind the reaction
Robert Dwyer, a researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said the device uses electric fields to heat and accelerate deuterium gas until it reaches fusion conditions, at which point the atoms join together, or fuse, producing neutrons. He added that the setup requires vacuum chambers, vacuum pumps and a high voltage source capable of generating an electric field.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy research facility in New Mexico best known for its role in developing the atomic bomb during the Second World War, and it continues to carry out research into nuclear science today.
A bid for Guinness World Records
McMillan has submitted an application to Guinness World Records seeking recognition as the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion. The organization has yet to review his case.
The record currently cited as active belongs to Jackson Oswalt of Memphis, who achieved fusion in 2018 just hours before turning 13. His result was later verified by the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium, and Guinness recognized the record in October 2020.
Before Oswalt, Taylor Wilson held the mark at age 14 in 2008, when he built a fusor in his parents' garage in Texarkana, Arkansas.
Not a source of usable energy
McMillan's achievement does not mean his device produces usable energy. A fusor consumes far more electricity than its reactions release, and its purpose in this context is to demonstrate that fusion can be produced, not to generate electricity from it.
Safety was also part of the project. The main risk identified is X-rays, which are produced when high energy electrons strike the walls of the chamber, meaning this kind of equipment requires shielding and monitoring. The reaction also cannot sustain itself: once the electrical power is cut, the process stops. McMillan carried out the work under adult supervision and with strict safety measures in place.
