China is making its own sun, the temperature reached 160 million degrees Celsius
Scientists working on the artificial Sun were able to maintain a plasma temperature of 216 million Fahrenheit by nuclear fusion for a period of 101 seconds.
China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) has set a new record in a latest experiment. According to a media report, in this experiment, it maintained a plasma temperature of 216 million Fahrenheit i.e. 120 million Celsius for a time of 101 seconds. What’s more, scientists working on the “artificial sun” were able to maintain a temperature of 288 million Fahrenheit (160 million Celsius) for 20 seconds.
The Tokamak device, located at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (ASIPP) in Hefei, is designed to reproduce the nuclear fusion process. The same process occurs in the Sun and other stars as well, which generates heat and light. This experiment was done to provide unlimited clean energy through controlled nuclear fusion. The previous record was to hold 180 million Fahrenheit (100 million Celsius) for 100 seconds, which has now been broken. This is a big step towards working with nuclear fusion.
“This experiment by Chinese scientists will mark a milestone in maintaining a stable temperature over a long period of time,” Li Miao, director of the Physics Department of the Southern University of Shenzhen and Science and Technology, said in a statement to the Global Times.
According to a report in New Atlas, scientists are currently working on a wide variety of devices intended to trigger such a reaction. But experts say donut-shaped tokamak devices like the EAST are quite reliable. The device consists of a series of magnetic coils that can hold the high-temperature hydrogen plasma in place until a reaction occurs. China’s “artificial sun” experiment is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). It is a global science project that will be the world’s largest nuclear fusion reactor when it becomes operational in 2035. 35 countries like China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and US are working on this project. Maintaining a temperature of 100 million Celsius for its instrument while nuclear fusion occurs is a major challenge. In 2020, Korea’s KSTAR reactor set a record by maintaining 100 million plasma temperatures for 20 seconds. It is believed that the core of the Sun has a temperature of 15 million Celsius. This means that the temperature produced by (EAST) is also 7 times the temperature of the Sun.
