Plug Regime Gate

The plug plasma regime sits 166–830x beyond any device operated to date, so its behavior cannot be post-dicted from existing experiments.

This is the second honest gate at the plug. Even setting aside whether the 26.49 T coil can be built, the plug plasma is asked to operate in a regime — its combination of field, density, temperature, and confinement — that is 166 to 830 times beyond the parameter space of any device that has actually run. There is no experimental point close enough to extrapolate from with confidence.

The consequence is epistemic: the plug's behavior cannot be post-dicted. Simulation can propose it, but no operated machine has reached the neighborhood needed to validate the models there. The design is honest that this is a projection into unexplored space, not an interpolation between known results.

Why the range is wide

• Different plug parameters push different figures of merit
• The 166–830x band spans those metrics, not measurement error
• All of it lies outside the operated regime
• Model confidence there is low by construction

How the gate could close

This gate closes through experiment, not analysis alone. Intermediate devices that step the plug regime toward the design point — the test burner targeted around 2032 is one such step — would provide the anchoring data that models presently lack. Until a device operates meaningfully closer to this regime, the plug remains a simulation result standing on unvalidated ground, and the burner should be read that way.

Reporting the 166–830x figure openly is part of the machine's candor: it names exactly how far the design reaches past demonstrated physics.