Scientists in America hope to be harnessing the power of nuclear fusion to create limitless energy as early as next year.
Boffins working just outside of Santa Fe in New Mexico are busy building a massive nuclear fusion plasma cannon made of 36 plasma guns.
While this sounds like the stuff of terrifying sci-fi, the Plasma Liner Experiment (PLX) could be the answer to limitless fusion power in the real world.
Live Science reports the dream of generating unlimited energy with zero emissions by slamming hydrogen atoms together could be edging closer to reality with this experiment, being funded by the US Government.
It's relatively simple to create nuclear fusion, but the challenge is in creating a fusion reactor which gives out more energy than is consumed by the machine creating and containing the reaction.
This is the same nuclear reaction as that which powers the sun itself.
The US scientists have installed 18 of 36 plasma guns onto the cannon, which will work by shooting supersonic jets of ionised gas at hydrogen atoms.
PLX uses powerful magnets to contain the hydrogen before it is hit by hot jets of plasma shooting out of the guns located around the device's spherical chamber.
If it can be harnessed it would product almost limitless energy which produces less radioactive waste than nuclear fission.
Lead scientist Dr Samuel Langendorf said: "We will conduct experiments this year to study the formation of a hemispherical liner with 18 guns installed.
"We hope to complete the installation of the remaining 18 guns in early 2020 and to be conducting fully spherical experiments by the end of 2020.
"This will allow us to measure the scaling of the liner ram pressure on stagnation as well as the liner uniformity, which are important metrics of the liner performance."
