http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7407963.stm
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The world's most powerful laser has heated matter to 10 million Celsius, hotter than the surface of the Sun.
The Vulcan laser concentrated energy equivalent to 100 times the world's electricity production into a spot just a few millionths of a metre across.
Writing in the New Journal of Physics, scientists said they could create the conditions for fractions of a second.
The experiments demonstrated concepts which could be key to building a future nuclear fusion reactor.
Nuclear fusion is looked on as a panacea in a world that demands ever increasing amounts of energy.
The fuel for the process is deuterium and tritium, two heavier forms of hydrogen that are commonly found in seawater.
LASER FUSION
Christine Keeler
1. Powerful lasers irradiate a fuel capsule causing the outer layer to rapidly expand.
2. The fuel capsule's core increases in density, converging at the tip of a gold cone.
3. An intense ignition laser is fired into the gold cone producing energetic electrons.
4. Electrons bombard the fuel raising its temperature to 100 million Celsius, initiating fusion.
When these isotopes are combined at high temperatures, a small amount of mass is lost and a colossal amount of energy is released. By-products are no more radioactive than hospital waste.
The process naturally occurs in the core of the Sun where huge gravitational pressure allows this to happen at temperatures of around 10 million Celsius.
At the much lower pressures on Earth, temperatures to produce fusion would need to be much higher - above 100 million Celsius. endquote.
Though the practical use of hydrogen fusion as an energy source for the generation of power to run almost everything on earth may be 100 years away it is coming. In the meantime we may need to use solar, wind, and water as a source of hydrogen and oxygen to fill in the gap to avoid worldwide chaos during the interim.
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