China is on course to finish building an "artificial sun" before the end of the year, local media reports.
China has created an "artificial sun" that burns at 100 million degrees Celsius - over six times hotter than the actual Sun.
The incredible structure will be capable of reaching 100 million degrees Celsius – six times hotter than the center of our Sun.
Aside from being impressive, the success of EAST is a significant step for China's nuclear fusion programme.
This would bring humanity a step closer to creating "unlimited clean energy", by mimicking reactions that naturally occur inside the Sun proper.
When two hydrogen nuclei combine, they produce an enormous amount of energy. That process, known as nuclear fusion, is how our Sun generates light and heat, and it’s the great white whale of the energy world — if we could find a way to harness it, we’d have a near-limitless source of clean energy.
The "artificial sun" was first announced by Chinese researchers last November, but the project has just hit an important milestone.
Chinese media reports that early trials have allowed researchers to create stunningly high temperatures.
Plasma temperatures inside the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) at the lab in China's Anhui Province have reached 100 million degrees Celsius
A tokamak is a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to confine a hot plasma in the shape of a torus. The tokamak is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices being developed to produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power. As of 2016, it is the leading candidate for a practical fusion reactor.
Researchers are using a device called a "tokamak", which uses a powerful magnetic field to trap hot plasma.
Our Sun hits temperatures of around 15 million degrees Celsius at its core.
But the plasma from China's artificial sun has reached an electron temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius – and an ion temperature of 50 million degrees Celsius.
Ions are what "generate energy in the device", Duan Xuru, an official at the China National Nuclear Corporation, told Science and Technology Daily, the official newspaper of China's Ministry of Science and Technology.
So the plan is to now bring the ion temperature up to 100 million degrees too. Ion temperature is usually lower than electron temperature, so this may be difficult.
China independently designed and constructed the EAST in 2006. The facility is 11 meters tall, with a diameter of 8 meters, and a weight of 400 tons. The country is the first in the world to design and develop such an equipment on its own.
The device, Duan said, needs to be tweaked to hit the goal.
As well as high pressure, nuclear fusion requires extremely high temperatures – which the artificial sun could provide.
If successful, China will be able to provide a major helping hand to ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.
It's a major project involving scientists from 35 countries that aims to "new energy" sources using nuclear fusion.
If nuclear fusion can be harnessed using a low-energy method, it could allow for the creation of "unlimited" clean energy.
China recently sprouted a seed on the Moon in a world first.
