nuclear fusionn.

1887 Amer. Naturalist 21 157 In Opalina the only form of fertilization as yet discovered is that of nuclear fusion during encystment.

1900 Jrnl. Royal Microsc. Soc. 73 The generation in which the nuclear fusion occurs is probably in all cases degenerate.

1935 Ann. Reg. 1934 55 Fungal sexuality received much attention and it looks as if some ascomycetes may have one and others two nuclear fusions.

1970 Protoplasma 70 292 Once the outer cell surfaces have joined and two nuclei are in a common cytoplasm, nuclear fusion nearly always seems to follow.

1998 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 95 6228/1 Each dikaryotic cell maintains the two haploid nuclei donated by each mating partner and it is only in the fruit body that nuclear fusion occurs and mating is completed.

1952 Economist 22 Nov. 541/1 This may have been a hybrid bomb, part atom, part hydrogen, but enough to prove that the scientists have solved the problem of releasing energy by nuclear fusion.

1969 New Scientist 25 Sept. 640/1 The Tokamak machines..have formed the basis of the main Soviet research effort into achieving controlled nuclear fusion during the past few years.

1979 Jrnl. Royal Soc. Arts 127 577/2 Nuclear fusion can convert 0·7 per cent of the rest mass of the hydrogen core into energy.

1988 T. Ferris Coming of Age in Milky Way (1989) i. xiii. 248 It is nuclear fusion..that has powered the sun for as long.