A major breakthrough has been announced by US scientists in the race to recreate nuclear fusion.
Physicists have pursued the technology for decades as it promises a potential source of near-limitless clean energy.
On Tuesday researchers confirmed they have overcome a major barrier - producing more energy from a fusion experiment than was put in.
But experts say there is still some way to go before fusion powers homes.
The experiment took place at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California.
Nuclear fusion is described as the "holy grail" of energy production. It is the process that powers the Sun and other stars.
It works by taking pairs of light atoms and forcing them together - this "fusion" releases a lot of energy.
It is the opposite of nuclear fission, where heavy atoms are split apart. Fission is the technology currently used in nuclear power stations, but the process also produces a lot of waste that continues to give out radiation for a long time. It can be dangerous and must be stored safely.
Nuclear fusion produces far more energy, and only small amounts of short-lived radioactive waste. And importantly, the process produces no greenhouse gas emissions and therefore does not contribute to climate change.
But one of the challenges is that forcing and keeping the elements together in fusion requires very large amounts of temperature and pressure. Until now, no experiment has managed to produce more energy than the amount put in to make it work.
The National Ignition Facility in California is a $3.5bn (£2.85bn) experiment.
It puts a tiny amount of hydrogen into a capsule the size of a peppercorn.
Then a powerful 192-beam laser is used to heat and compress the hydrogen fuel.
The laser is so strong it can heat the capsule to 100 million degrees Celsius - hotter than the centre of the Sun, and compress it to more than 100 billion times that of Earth's atmosphere.
Under these forces the capsule begins to implode on itself, forcing the hydrogen atoms to fuse and release energy.
On announcing the breakthrough Dr. Marvin Adams deputy administrator for defense programs at the US National Nuclear Security Administration said that the laboratory's lasers had input 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, which had then produced 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output.
Dr Melanie Windridge, CEO of Fusion Energy Insights, told the BBC: "Fusion has been exciting scientists since they first figured out what was causing the Sun to shine. These results today really put us on the path to the commercialization of the technology."
Prof Jeremy P. Chittenden, professor of plasma physics and co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London called it "a true breakthrough moment" which proves 'the 'holy grail' of fusion, can indeed be achieved".
This has been the sentiment echoed by physicists globally, who praised the work of the international science community.
Prof Gianluca Gregori, Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford said: "Today's success rests upon the work done by many scientists in the US, UK and around the world. With ignition now achieved, not only fusion energy is unlocked, but also a door is opening to new science."
On the question of how long before we could see fusion being used in power stations, LLNL Director Dr. Kim Budil said there were still significant hurdles but that: "with concerted efforts and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant".
This is progress from when scientists used to say 50 - 60 years in answer to that question.
One of the main hurdles is getting cost down and scaling up the energy output.
The experiment was only able to produce enough energy to boil about 15-20 kettles and required billions of dollars of investment. And although the experiment got more energy out than the laser put in, this did not include the energy needed to make the lasers work - which was far greater that the amount of energy the hydrogen produced.
The amount of energy they've generated in this experiment is tiny - just enough to boil a few kettles. But what it represents is huge for the scientists who've spent so long working on this technology - and for all of us.
The promise of a fusion-powered future is one step closer. But - and there always is a but with these breakthroughs - there's still a long way to go before this becomes a reality.
This experiment shows that the science works. Now it needs to be repeated, perfected, and the amount of energy it generates will have to be significantly boosted.
This is before scientists can even think about scaling the process up.
The other issue is the cost - this experiment has cost billions of dollars - fusion does not come cheap.
But the promise of a source of clean energy will certainly be a big incentive for overcoming these challenges.
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You just beat me, I was half way through writing up the top Daily Mail comments:
Top scientists of DM:
Really makes you think:
The Russians already did it:
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wouldn't fusion require constant atoms to be fed? where would they come from
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When the reaction is self sustaining it could be used to power a water electrolysis machine and feed the hydrogen output back into itself, in theory. Some other dramatard could probably do the math on that.
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what happened to the "mass can neither be created nor destroyed" or was that debunked by the standard model-cels?
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mass can be converted to energy because they are equivalent. Thus E=mc (squared)
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bro your ² key???
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I'm typing this on a TRS-80. That's the best I can do
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It doesn't create mass it just changes how it's organized releasing energy in the process
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then why do stars die?
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_nucleosynthesis
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When stars "die" they're doing exactly what was just said. The stars don't lose mass. Their reaction levels drop and they shrink down and become incredibly dense. The example you'll hear people repeat when talking about white dwarfs is to imagine taking the sun and squeezing it down into a ball the size of Earth. All that matter is still there, it's just packed in really tight.
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This is rdrama. You should've described it as how when you blast busy, the shit is still there, you're just packing it in.
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This you?
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Because they’re fricking losers lmao
They just get denser, genius
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Not sure how that's relevant to splitting water molecules but I think you're thinking of energy, not mass.
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The air, dingus. In the video, there's a scientist with a wooden air blower that pushes the atoms all up in that laser machine.
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atoms from my peepee will collide with the atoms from the back of your throat if you keep being smug
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Fusion requires deuterium and and tritium to work. deuterium is fricking everywhere but tritium is man made and they're not sure where they're going to get enough supply to run a power plant. Currently, tritium is a rare byproduct from nuclear reactors.
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The moon
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Jupiter is made of hydrogen and helium
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My peepee
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From the anus of a flying pig. This kind of reaction is never going to be viable at grid scale.
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Commenting on a Daily Mail article should be grounds for having your voter's registration taken away
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What about commenting on comments on a Daily Mail article on rdrama?
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Should get you a post as a nuclear energy advisor in Joe Biden's government
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None of these fine fellows are voting, trust me
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Also your genitals
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What if I comment but then immediately delete it?
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Fusion will come right when it BTFO's the most parts of the planet that are not the US.
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