Outside, the freezing Connecticut winter has blanketed everything with several feet of snow. But in front of me a pinprick of atoms burns as hot as the Sun's corona. I lean in towards the dazzling spot of light. Behind me, a couple of welders are getting fidgety. "Did he tell her not to touch that thing," one of them whispers, pointing at the light. Above me an electrode sizzles, creating this droplet of purple plasma glowing at over 10,000℃. I'm standing in an industrial warehouse owned by Acceleron, a family-run welding company based in East Granby. Acceleron is part-funding Ady Hershcovitch, a physicist from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York State, to build a device that could revolutionise the construction of fighter jets, ships and luxury cars - anything, in fact, that requires metal to be welded as seamlessly as possible. Anyone who wants to make smooth, high-quality welds between two pieces of metal uses beams of high-energy electrons to melt and fuse the metal. But electron beam welding is expensive, and imposes restrictions on the designs that can be used. Hershcovitch plans to change all that.
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