China’s ‘artificial sun’ hits a record

By maintaining a temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for more than 100 seconds, Chinese scientists are getting closer to creating an ‘artificial sun’.
China’s Tokamak Superconducting Reactors (EAST) are among the world’s most promising nuclear fusion research devices, and they’ve made some impressive strides over the past few years. Chinese scientists have achieved a new world record by maintaining the temperature of plasma at 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds in the latest test, getting closer to their long-held goal of clean and limitless energy source.

The idea behind the study of nuclear fusion is to recreate how the Sun generates enormous amounts of energy, a process involving a large amount of heat and pressure that combine to form plasma, in which atomic particles fuse. with super speed. Scientists are looking to trigger and study these reactions on Earth with a variety of experimental equipment, but experts say that EAST, located at the Hefei Institute of Physical Sciences of the Academy of Sciences Chinese studies, is the most promising approach. Inside China’s “Artificial Sun”, the Tokamak Superconducting Reactor (EAST). Photo: Newatlas. The EAST is a metal toroidal device consisting of magnetic coils designed to sustain streams of superheated hydrogen plasma long enough for the above reactions to occur. In 2016, scientists at EAST heated a hydrogen plasma to about 50 million degrees Celsius and maintained it for 102 seconds. Then in 2018, they hit 100 million degrees Celsius, six times hotter than the Sun’s core, and lasted 10 seconds. According to the Xinhua , the latest test marks a big step forward, achieving a new record when heating the plasma to 120 million degrees Celsius and maintaining it for 101 seconds. In separate experiments, this “artificial sun” heated plasma to 160 million degrees Celsius in 20 seconds. The goal of EAST is to maintain the plasma at 100 million degrees Celsius for more than 1,000 seconds (about 17 minutes). These experiments are not designed to generate conventional electricity, but to advance the field of synthetic physics for next-generation devices such as ITER, the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor is expected to be. completed by 2025. Similar to EAST, experiments on South Korea’s KSTAR reactor set a world record last year, maintaining plasma at more than 100 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds. In addition, the country also announced the development of ITER and is expected to officially operate in 2035.