The holy grail of getting energy from fusion reactions could eventually come out of a new MIT experiment involving what's called levitated dipoles. The apparatus, according to the account in Physorg.com, includes
....a half-ton donut-shaped magnet about the size and shape of a large truck tire, made of superconducting wire coiled inside a stainless steel vessel. This magnet is suspended by a powerful electromagnetic field, and is used to control the motion of the 10-million-degree-hot electrically charged gas, or plasma, contained within its 16-foot-diameter outer chamber.
Not exactly something you could throw together in your garage. The observed result is supposed to be counter-intuitive, at least for physicists, because random turbulence makes the plasma more densely concentrated. It is a completely different approach than the tokamaks normally used to try and induce fusion reactions.
Physorg.com's account of this thing is here:
