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Daily Galaxy 74K Followers A 12-year-old boy built a nuclear fusion device in his spare room. Then it detected real neutrons Story by Arezki Amiri • 18h • 4 min read A Texas Seventh-Grader Built a Fusion Reactor in a Spare Room. Image credit: NBC 5 News | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel A Texas Seventh-Grader Built a Fusion Reactor in a Spare Room. Image credit: NBC 5 News | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel © Daily Galaxy CA At eight years old, Aiden McMillan started reading about nuclear physics. He wasn’t doing it for school. He was just interested. For the next two years, he didn’t touch a single piece of equipment. He read, studied concepts, and ran calculations. Only then did he start building. Sponsored By the time he was 12, that quiet start had become something few adults ever attempt. Working out of a spare room at home and a nonprofit workshop in West Dallas, the seventh-grader built a machine that produced nuclear fusion, putting him in line for a Guinness World Record. Aiden Mcmillan Discussing Fusion Project. Aiden Mcmillan Discussing Fusion Project. © Daily Galaxy CA McMillan told NBC DFW that he pursued the project simply because he found it interesting. “It doesn’t make me jump higher. It doesn’t make me write faster. It doesn’t do anything for me,” he said. “But in the grand scheme of things, fusion as a whole, in my opinion, is the energy of the future.” Two Years of Reading, Then Two Years of Building McMillan, a student in the Dallas Independent School District, spent the first two years of the project studying nuclear physics before he assembled anything. He needed to understand the underlying science before he could translate it into hardware. Sponsored The next two years were spent building and testing. He worked through seven different prototypes before reaching a result. Components failed, designs were scrapped, and the process required skills well outside a standard middle school curriculum, including how to handle vacuum pumps and manage high-voltage equipment safely. The Nuclear Fusor Built By Aiden Macmillan, Pictured At Launchpad Incubator. The Nuclear Fusor Built By Aiden Macmillan, Pictured At Launchpad Incubator. © Daily Galaxy CA “I mean, I loved the project, but I also kinda hated it,” McMillan told NBC DFW. Much of the physical build took place at Launchpad, a nonprofit makerspace housed in a brick building in West Dallas. The space supports ambitious student engineering projects, and McMillan’s work was part of what helped inspire its creation. How the Device Actually Works Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun. It works by forcing two light atomic nuclei together with enough energy that they merge into a single larger nucleus, releasing energy as they combine. McMillan’s machine is a type of device called a fusor. It uses high voltage to accelerate atoms of deuterium, a form of hydrogen, inside a sealed chamber until some of them collide fast enough to fuse. The device does not generate usable electricity. Its purpose is to demonstrate that fusion is occurring. Sponsored The proof comes from neutrons. When deuterium atoms fuse, they release neutrons as a byproduct, and those neutrons can be measured with a detector. Professional laboratories use the same method to verify fusion. According to Newsweek, McMillan’s neutron measurements have since been independently verified. When the detector confirmed a result, McMillan’s reaction was immediate. “We got neutrons, yeah!” he recalled to NBC DFW. “Kind of tearing up about it cause it was like, hard to describe. It was like the end of a long, long journey.” Safety and a Mother Who Needed Convincing Building a fusion device at home raised real concerns, and McMillan’s mother was not prepared to wave them aside. She required a detailed accounting of every risk before allowing the project to move forward. “There were some alarm bells with my mom, yes,” McMillan told NBC DFW. “She was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, take a step back, tell me exactly what could go wrong, and how it could go wrong and make sure it doesn’t go wrong.'” The breakthrough moment came when the device generated neutrons The breakthrough moment came when the device generated neutrons © Daily Galaxy CA Winning that trust was a condition of the project continuing at all. Without it, the work would have stopped at notebooks and sketches. The family worked through the safety questions rather than around them, and the build proceeded from there. The Record He Is Chasing The current Guinness World Record for youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion belongs to Jackson Oswalt of Memphis, Tennessee, who did it in 2018 just hours before turning 13. Oswalt had started his project at age 11, converting his family’s playroom into a lab and sourcing parts on eBay. He taught himself using the online community Fusor.net, and his results were later verified by the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium. Guinness officially recognized his record in October 2020. Oswalt himself had broken a previous record set by Taylor Wilson, who achieved fusion at age 14 in 2008. When Oswalt’s story went public, FBI agents visited his Memphis home and swept it with a Geiger counter to check for radiation. The instrument detected nothing dangerous. McMillan achieved fusion at 12, which would make him several months younger than Oswalt was at the time of his result. He has submitted a formal application to Guinness World Records and is awaiting their verification decision. What the Achievement Represents McMillan’s fusor, like Oswalt’s before it, does not solve the broader challenge of making fusion a practical energy source. The device produces real fusion reactions but generates no net electricity. The gap between demonstrating fusion and making it commercially viable remains the central problem facing the field. That context does not diminish what McMillan built. He worked through seven prototypes over four years, taught himself vacuum systems and high-voltage handling, and produced neutron measurements that have been independently confirmed. His Guinness application is now under review. Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to our free newsletter for engaging stories, exclusive content, and the latest news. 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Site of Loki, Freyja, Wonder Woman, Ishtar, Valeria Richards, Amora the Enchantress and Emma Frost

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