IP Group PLC (LSE:IPO) portfolio company First Light Fusion’s “Big Friendly Gun” has just rewritten the record books, generating pressures 25 million times that of Earth’s atmosphere, the highest ever achieved on a two-stage light gas gun.
This breakthrough means extreme pressure tests that once required enormous, costly facilities can now be done in a much smaller and cheaper way.
The BFG is a 25-metre-long, £1.1 million machine at First Light’s Oxfordshire labs that fires a metal-tipped projectile at more than 7 kilometres per second (over 15,000 mph) into a vacuum chamber.
The impact compressed a quartz sample to a 2.5 terapascals (TPa), around 2,500 gigapascals, shattering the usual 200 gigapascal limit for this type of device.
To put this into context, the BFG replicated the force only seen with the collision force of a meteorite.
Temperatures during the experiment soared above 100,000 degrees Celsius, three times hotter than lightning.
Two-stage light gas guns have been a mainstay in materials science for decades because they’re more affordable and accessible than the giant government labs used for extreme pressure research.
But until now, their pressure range was capped, limiting what scientists could study. First Light’s new amplification technology changes the game, letting smaller machines reach pressure conditions comparable to the world’s biggest research facilities.
Mark Thomas, CEO at First Light Fusion, said: “Another experiment, another world record set. This is a significant scientific breakthrough for First Light, but we aren’t done yet. This is a remarkable achievement that will revolutionise materials science research and further validate our high-gain inertial fusion concept.”
Earlier this year, First Light set a record of 3.67 terapascals using the giant Z Machine at Sandia National Laboratories in the US, the world’s largest electrical pulsed power facility.
By unlocking these extreme pressures with compact and cost-effective equipment, First Light hopes to open up new research possibilities in space, defence, and materials science, fields that rely on understanding how materials behave under conditions far beyond everyday experience.