China close to creating 'artificial star' three times hotter than Sun

Crucially the team were able to maintain the temperature – a balmy 50 million °C – for almost two minutes.

The experiment – in a doughnut-shaped reactor dubbed the "Artifical Sun" at the Institute of Physical Science in Hefei – produced as much energy as an H-bomb thermonuclear weapon exploding.

The breakthrough is a huge leap forward in atomic research as scientists have only been able to produce so much heat for a fraction of a second.

Until now, Germany has been at the forefront of the quest for nuclear fusion after scientists used 2 megawatts of microwave radiation to heat hydrogen gas to 80 million °C.

The Chinese physicists achieved 50 million °C for 102 seconds using a powerful magnetic field to keep the gas suspended inside the doughnut-shaped chamber.

In a fusion reaction, the centre – or nucleus – of two atoms combines to create one new heavier nuclear.

The fusing of the two atoms produces huge amounts of energy that could power a nuclear power station – but at them moment it takes even more energy to start the reaction and contain it.

In Spiderman 2, Dr Octopus uses his robot arms to stabilise a fusion reaction – in a bid to produce cheap, clean energy for the world.

(dailystar.co.uk)