stellarator

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a device that confines hot plasma for nuclear-fusion research using a twisted arrangement of external magnetic coils

   The stellarator maintained the plasma without relying on a large current flowing through it.

Formed from stellar ("of a star") + -ator, suggesting a machine intended to reproduce the energy-producing fusion processes of stars. Physicist Lyman Spitzer devised and named the stellarator in the early 1950s.

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