Milestone: China’s artificial ‘sun’ becomes six times hotter than real sun

If artificial moon wasn’t enough, China has reached a new milestone with its ‘artificial sun’ that was designed to replicate the process our natural sun uses to generate energy.

A team of China’s Hefei Institutes of Physical Science announced that its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor, which was created for replicating process used by sun to produce energy, has hit a new temperature of reaching 100 million degrees Celsius.

As per Futurism, comparing it to the natural sun, the core of it reaches about 15 million degrees Celsius, which makes China’s artificial sun over six times hottest than the real sun. However, this sun won’t be launched up in the skies, instead is a experiment for nuclear fusion.

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This process also does not produce any radioactive waste, which makes it extremely environmental friendly. According to Song Yuntao, deputy director at EAST, the device is controllable, and they can shut down the power supply at any time and there won’t be any nuclear disaster risk. Researchers noted that the progress could pave the way for developing clean energy through nuclear fusion, as per China Central Television.

Our sun generates light and heat energy by a process called nuclear fusion, that’s when two hydrogen nuclei combine to produce huge amount of energy; and if we could find a way to harness it, we would have a near-limitless source of clean energy. With the help of Tokamak devices like EAST, this might be possible.

Tokamaks are devices that use magnetic fields of control plasma in a way that could support stable nuclear fusion. It is this plasma that led EAST to heat to such a high temperature. Apart from being remarkably hot, EAST plasma temperature is also important because it is the minimum temperature scientists believe is required for producing a self-sustaining nuclear fusion reach on Earth.

Researchers believe that now their artificial sun is able to heat plasma to the required temperature, they can focus on the next steps along the path to stable nuclear fusion, since this process was only possible at 100 million degrees Celsius.

The artificial sun was designed and constructed by China back in 2006. EAST is 11 meters tall, have an 8 meters diameter and weighs 400 tons. This marks China as the first country to design and develop such an equipment on its own, according to China Daily.