David Kirtley

And so the theta pinch was what was born in the 1950s of take this magnetic field and oh, they're trying to escape.

Great.

Let's not let them escape.

Let's close the bottle.

Let's close the ends.

And so we make the magnetic field much stronger at the ends.

This one was called the mirror.

And so the idea was that the

the particles would bounce in between.

And that worked and they got hotter and hotter and hotter.

But guess what?

As you kind of would imagine, as this mirror topology, this linear topology, the pressure increased inside.

The particle pressure, the particles tried to push back on the magnetic field.

They're trying to escape now.

They're trying, they're getting hotter and hotter.

And just as you imagine, hot gas in a balloon tries to get out the ends and you could not hold it tight enough at the ends to keep those particles in.

And in fact, the problem is the hottest ones were the ones that would escape.

And so you do a good job of heating it and they'd all leave out the ends.

Okay.

So then the next iteration has said, okay, well, why don't we just not try to hold onto it very long?