Can you remember what you were doing when you were 12 years old?
Me, I was highly anticipating the release of Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie and spent most nights playing the Wii, but Jackson Oswalt, from Memphis, Tennessee, has very different memories of being 12.
You see, when Jackson was just a tween, he one day had a ‘sudden epiphany’.
Jackson had an ‘epiphany’ about video games when he was a child (X/@JacksonOswalt)
According to the Guinness World Records website, he explained: “I realized that I could be the absolute best at whatever video game, but in the end it still wouldn’t mean much. In the grand scheme of things, video games had no role to play. So, I changed my ways.”
Jackson didn’t turn his interest to comic books or movies like some other kids might – instead he opted for what he described as ‘the closest thing to video games in real life: science’.
The near-teenager threw himself into the subject of science, watching YouTube videos on nuclear fusion and researching materials that might allow him to pull off the process himself.
In case you weren’t a science-inclined 12-year-old like Jackson, nuclear fusion is the process of combining atomic nuclei under intense pressure and heat, causing them to form one or more atomic nuclei and neutrons. In turn, the process then causes a release or absorption of energy.
Jackson achieved his Guinness World Record at 12 years old (YouTube/Guinness World Records)
Jackson recalled his steps to achieve nuclear fusion in a thread on Twitter last year, writing: “The first step was to build a ‘demo fusor’, or a device that creates plasma but doesn’t achieve fusion. This required a vacuum chamber, vacuum pump, and a neon sign transformer with a homemade AC-DC converter.
“I ended up bringing this version to my school’s science fair. I only got it working the night before. In hindsight, it’s amazing they let me walk in the door with it.”
After purchasing the materials he needed and spending more than a year testing his experiment, Jackson officially became the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion in 2018, when his efforts – achieved the day before he turned 13 – were verified by Fusor.net, The Open Source Fusor Research Consortium.
Pretty cool, right?
But if that wasn’t exciting enough for a 12 year old, things took another wild turn when Jackson was greeted one Saturday morning by two FBI agents.
Having heard about Jackson’s success, the two agents carried out a sweep of the young boy’s house with a geiger counter to make sure his experiments hadn’t resulted in any radiation.
Thankfully, however, the agency’s involvement didn’t go much further.
“Fortunately I remained a free man,” Jackson said.
Seven years on from Jackson’s accomplishment, the young scientist is now working for research labs such as Midjourney, where he’s working on hardware and research into AI.
