Squeeze inside a fusion reactor with a Nat Geo photographer

Wearing a clean white lab suit complete with white shoes and gloves, National Geographic Explorer Paolo Verzone laid down and shimmied into an opening not much wider than himself. He was, as he says, “entering into a star.”

Or, at least, it’s just about as close one can get to the experience on Earth. On this November day, Verzone was granted a rare exclusive look at the insides of the Wendelstein 7-X , an experimental fusion reactor at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany, while it was undergoing maintenance.

When Wendelstein 7-X is operational, the doughnut-shaped chamber where Verzone stands is filled with plasma, a type of hot, supercharged gas. The machin