Science: Lockheed Martin recently received a lot of publicity for revealing a project to create a compact fusion reactor. At a press conference yesterday, Tom McGuire, the project leader, said the goal of going public was to help find R&D partners. The company has been working on the project for the past four years and believes it has a viable design that combines aspects of several past fusion projects. The core of the reactor uses multiple layers of magnetic confinement and recirculates particles through the system. McGuire said the test device that the team built sustained a stable plasma on more than 200 runs, but he did not provide any details about the measurements. The team hopes to have enough information to publish sometime next year.