Jack Hare says running a science lab is rather like spelunking. In graduate school for plasma physics, at Imperial College London, he was part of the caving club. Each summer, he'd spend three weeks on an expedition to Slovenia, where they'd camp 600 meters underground for days at a time, mapping the subterranean labyrinths. In 2021, after three postdoctoral fellowships, he joined MIT as an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering. 'Caving was a great experience,' he says. 'I think the logistics side of those expeditions ' planning everything, making sure everything's in place, carrying everything into the cave ' has actually been really useful for building my lab.' Hare studies plasma, a high-energy gas in which atomic nuclei and electrons roam around separately. He notes that virtually all the matter in the universe ' stars, nebulae, the debris orbiting black holes ' is made of plasma. The team creates plasma in small quantities and watches what it does. 'We can...
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