Image: NASA
What is an ‘artificial sun’?
It’s a term used to describe advanced scientific experiments that try to recreate the energy of the Sun on Earth.
Image: NASA
Fusion
The Sun in our solar system produces energy through a nuclear fusion reaction, and scientists have been trying to recreate it for decades.
Image: U.S. Department on Energy
Sun’s energy
Inside the Sun, hydrogen atoms collide and fuse with each other at extremely high temperatures (15 million°C) and under enormous gravitational pressure.
Image: NASA
Fusion vs fission
Nuclear fusion and fission are two different things. The latter is a process in which heavy atomic nuclei are split into smaller nuclei, releasing energy.
Image: Shutterstock
Radioactivity
Fission is currently used in nuclear power plants, but it produces radioactive waste and carries risks like meltdown accidents.
Image: Shutterstock
Difficulty
However, fusion requires extreme conditions, such as temperature, pressure, and confinement, making it far more difficult to achieve and sustain compared to fission.
Image: Shutterstock
Tokamak
Scientists have tried to recreate nuclear fusion on Earth through a device called a tokamak, which uses a strong magnetic field to control and fuse hot plasma (fourth state of matter).
Image: ITER
Hotter than the Sun
The tokamak allows the plasma to reach temperatures over 100 million°C, which is about 10 times hotter than the Sun’s core, to compensate for its immense gravitational pull.
Image: Shutterstock
Cutting edge
China is currently at the cutting edge of this technology, with one of its tokamaks breaking its own world record and maintaining a steady, highly confined loop of plasma for 1,066 seconds in January 2025.
Image: ITER
Temperature record
In March 2025, China’s other nuclear fusion reactor, Huanliu-3 (HL-3), reached an atomic nucleus temperature of 117 million°C and an electron temperature of 160 million°C for the first time.
Image: Wikipedia
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