The Radiation Belts!

Artificial Belts and Fusion Research Believe it or not, physicists have been studying trapped particles in magnetic fields for decades. To do this, all you need is a vacuum chamber, a strong magnetic field, and an injectable source of plasma. It sounds easy, but it is very expensive to do this. The picture above shows a simulated Van Allen Belt generated by a plasma thruster in tank #5 located in the Electric Propulsion Laboratory at the John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio. The face of the scientist can be seen looking into the chamber from the window to the right. You can learn more about electric propulsion at the Deep Space-1 web page at NASA-Glenn.

At Johns Hopkins University, researchers have built a test model of a fusion reactor called Alcator C. Its powerful magnetic fields trap plasma inside, and heat it to nearly a million degrees (right). The design for these 'tokamak' fusion machines are donut-shaped chambers with magnetic fields that confine the million-degree plasma (left). Some day, these eery glows of colliding particles will give us unlimited clean energy!