Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, working with Japanese researchers, made the observation on the Large Helical Device (LHD) in Japan, a twisty magnetic facility that the Japanese call a "heliotron." The results demonstrated for the first time a novel regime for confining heat in facilities known as stellarators, similar to the heliotron. The findings could advance the twisty design as a blueprint for future fusion power plants Researchers produced the higher confinement regime by injecting tiny grains of boron powder into the LHD plasma that fuels fusion reactions. The injection through a PPPL-installed dropper...