The Linus program was successful to a point, but as the scale of the compression ramped up the system began to face the problem that the collapsing metal would squeeze the plasma out of the ends of the cylinder more rapidly than expected, too rapidly to complete the compression. Looking for solutions to this problem, they began to adapt the recently discovered field-reversed configuration (FRC), which causes the plasma to form into a self-stable form. By injecting the plasma in FRC, it would not squirt out the ends. Interest in mechanical compression waned as the researchers turned to studying FRCs.