China's "Artificial Star" Is Three Times Hotter Than Our Sun

[Fanghawk]

China's "Artificial Star" Is Three Times Hotter Than Our Sun

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1265/1265995.jpgChina has crushed Germany's hydrogen fusion record in an experiment with result three times hotter than our Sun.

Fusion reactors are the Holy Grail of clean energy, <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/scienceandtech/15378-How-Will-Fusion-Change-The-World?utm_source=latest&utm_medium=index_carousel&utm_campaign=all>producing almost unlimited fuel with none of the pesky environment side effects. We're just waiting for the technology to become viable, which makes Germany's Wendelstein 7-X experimental reactor so promising. But according to a new study, China has just surpassed Europe's fusion record, producing energy far longer than Germany did last January.

In case you're unfamiliar with fusion reactor technology, it attempts to recreate the immense energy of a star by heating hydrogen gas to comparable temperatures. As insane as that sounds, it's already possible with today's technology - but only for an instant. For example, Germany's Wendelstein reactor heats hydrogen to just over 80 million degrees Kelvin for less than a second.

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor, on the other hand, makes a far more impressive claim. It's cooler than the Wendelstein - only 50 million degrees Kelvin - but can maintain the temperature for 102 seconds. According to Chinese physicists, EAST achieves this with a powerful magnetic field which keeps the hydrogen suspended inside its chamber.

EAST's original goal was to reach 100 million Kelvins for 1000 seconds, but if these numbers are accurate, we're still looking at a new fusion record. These temperatures are also far hotter than the Sun itself - roughly 15 million Kelvin - and comparable to a medium-scale thermonuclear explosion. It will probably be a few decades before these reactors are feasible for meeting our widespread energy needs, but if this helps kick off a new energy race? Maybe <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/122573-Clean-Fusion-Power-Could-Be-Feasible-by-2017>the more optimistic fusion predictions won't be so unreasonable any longer.

Source: <a href=http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/641884/China-heats-hyrdogen-gas-three-times-hotter-than-sun-limitless-energy>Daily Express

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[Renegade-pizza]

I'm going to take this with a grain of salt. China isn't known for its honesty and one-upping a scientific achievement of this scale, within a week and 3 times better seems a bit...unlikely.

I'll wait and see if someone says its all bull or not

 

[Zontar]

I'm going to take this with a grain of salt. China isn't known for its honesty and one-upping a scientific achievement of this scale, within a week and 3 times better seems a bit...unlikely.

I'll wait and see if someone says its all bull or not

Pretty much this. China's habitual lying about literally everything in every sphere of life to the point where an honest statement getting through the layers of censorship is the exception makes disbelieving claims like this be the only reasonable default until someone with more credibility confirms it.

 

[cikame]

They can take all the records for all i care, as long as they're taking all the precautions and doing it safely.

 

[Naldan]

Even if there is just a shred of truth in this, it's amazing. I think the least they have done is maintain the energy, which is big in itself. The more the better, provided there are good intentions.

Hopefully, this will mean next-to-nothing costs for the end-consumer when it's ready. If we get electricity in a massive, massive quantity with little-to-no effort creating it, it will be a new age of prosperity as long as we have rare-earth elements. But even then, with so much electricity, we maybe come to create these ourselves, too. Electricity means potential energy in any form, as far as I can see.

So, please let this be real.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

...yeah, it's China. If we announced that we'd developed a ship that could go twice the speed of light, the very next day they'd announce a "secret project" that could go four times the speed of light. Honest!

Until it's reliably verified by a trustworthy third party, my eyebrow will remain raised.

 

[spartandude]

The only thing I have to say about this considering it's China claiming it...

 

[FalloutJack]

Of course, naturally, we dunno how accurate this is, buuut...if it WERE true...it would be pretty cool.

 

[enginieri]

A look at the source of this article ("the daily express") and the comments there... Is that site a reputable news source? there's no indication of the original source of the news

 

[enginieri]

102 seconds is orders of magnitude greater sustained fusion time than previous efforts, and possibly more than sufficient for positive energy net result?

 

[Xeorm]

Can we not refer too much to the German experiment? The single pulse they did was a test fire afaik. Their result didn't last long because it wasn't supposed to. It didn't even achieve fusion.

Also, great. Assuming any of the information is true.

 

[Lightknight]

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor, on the other hand, makes a far more impressive claim. It's cooler than the Wendelstein - only 50 million degrees Kelvin -

The article you linked to says it was 50 million Celsius. Not Kelvin.

But to be fair, the difference between Kelvin and Celsius is only 273.15 degrees, so with rounding a number in the tens of millions then that's not going to change regardless of which one we use.

Just strange to see the Kelvin scale being used, it's behind Celsius and Fahrenheit now that most of the world is on Celsius and the US still uses Fahrenheit.

 

[Fanghawk]

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor, on the other hand, makes a far more impressive claim. It's cooler than the Wendelstein - only 50 million degrees Kelvin -

The article you linked to says it was 50 million Celsius. Not Kelvin.

Is Google's temperature converter lying to me? Cause it says 50,000,000 Celsius comes to about 50,000,273 Kelvin. Even if I wasn't rounding down, that's not a huge shift at these scales.

 

[Lightknight]

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor, on the other hand, makes a far more impressive claim. It's cooler than the Wendelstein - only 50 million degrees Kelvin -

The article you linked to says it was 50 million Celsius. Not Kelvin.

Is Google's temperature converter lying to me? Cause it says 50,000,000 Celsius comes to about 50,000,273 Kelvin. Even if I wasn't rounding down, that's not a huge shift at these scales.

Sorry, you got in before my edit. I was just pondering the use of Kelvin at all. Strange to see it being used anymore after the worldwide conversion to Celsius. Also, why convert the scale being used from the source material at all?

Just strange.

Do you happen to have an actual science background? That's the main reason I would expect to see someone decide to use Kelvin instead since they're the only group still using that scale because it makes basic math easier since most numbers are going to be positive whereas the use of Celsius and Fahrenheit would result in some negative numbers.

To be frank, I'm moreso trying to get a read on you. You keep posting pretty neat articles and I'd like to know a bit more about your background going forward. Someone that auto-converts scales to the appropriate scientific scale is someone I can trust a bit more but not something I'd expect from a journalist, to be honest.

 

[Karadalis]

I'm going to take this with a grain of salt. China isn't known for its honesty and one-upping a scientific achievement of this scale, within a week and 3 times better seems a bit...unlikely.

I'll wait and see if someone says its all bull or not

Pretty much this. China's habitual lying about literally everything in every sphere of life to the point where an honest statement getting through the layers of censorship is the exception makes disbelieving claims like this be the only reasonable default until someone with more credibility confirms it.

Just wait for next weeks announcement of north korea having discovered the working Cold fusion, cloned a real life unicorn and the secret of immortality... but they are not going to share with anyone else because everyone else is a poo poo head.

.... you know i wouldnt be surprised if that was actually a real press release from north korea..

But as far as china goes: Yeah... ill believe that the moment someone outside of chinas control aknowledges it... someone who doesnt have to fear to spontanously "disapear" if he doesnt toe the party line...

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

They can take all the records for all i care, as long as they're taking all the precautions and doing it safely.

It's actually very safe. There's no risk of a meltdown in fusion.

 

[RandV80]

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor, on the other hand, makes a far more impressive claim. It's cooler than the Wendelstein - only 50 million degrees Kelvin -

The article you linked to says it was 50 million Celsius. Not Kelvin.

But to be fair, the difference between Kelvin and Celsius is only 273.15 degrees, so with rounding a number in the tens of millions then that's not going to change regardless of which one we use.

Just strange to see the Kelvin scale being used, it's behind Celsius and Fahrenheit now that most of the world is on Celsius and the US still uses Fahrenheit.

Rather than something like a Fahrenheit vs Celsius conversion argument I would assume that Kelvin is used exclusively by the scientific community, with the whole point being it's on the same scale as Celsius but just sets '0' at absolute zero. Which is, you know, probably useful for sciency stuff.

 

[Lightknight]

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor, on the other hand, makes a far more impressive claim. It's cooler than the Wendelstein - only 50 million degrees Kelvin -

The article you linked to says it was 50 million Celsius. Not Kelvin.

But to be fair, the difference between Kelvin and Celsius is only 273.15 degrees, so with rounding a number in the tens of millions then that's not going to change regardless of which one we use.

Just strange to see the Kelvin scale being used, it's behind Celsius and Fahrenheit now that most of the world is on Celsius and the US still uses Fahrenheit.

Rather than something like a Fahrenheit vs Celsius conversion argument I would assume that Kelvin is used exclusively by the scientific community, with the whole point being it's on the same scale as Celsius but just sets '0' at absolute zero. Which is, you know, probably useful for sciency stuff.

Right, but what we have here is a journalist conveying a scientific scenario to readers. In the vast majority of the time, neither are scientists that internally convert to Kelvin since that's their standard. Journalists usually cater to their audience so converting to Kelvin would be more alienating there. So what may be interesting here is if the journalist actually has a scientific background and subconsciously or intentionally used Kelvin instead of Celsius which is the common nomenclature worldwide. Alternately, it could have just been a mistake.

If subconsciously or intentionally, it would indicate that we actually have a science minded writer on our hands and would color (positively) my view of subsequent articles.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I wonder when North Korea will post that they mastered time travel?

Seriously, if it's true, it's an awesome advancement.

 

[mtarzaim02]

I wonder when North Korea will post that they mastered time travel?

Seriously, if it's true, it's an awesome advancement.

To be fair, time travel may already exist.
But since you can only travel to your own future, to bypass the casuality issue, we cannot meet time-travellers yet.
Which might make a good spy story: a secret agency preventing past-travelling thieves to steal current tech in order to bring it back to their own time, modify the "present" in the process. Imagine 1500 AD native-americans with space technology.

Incidentally, it would explain how certain people in history has been able to produce "miracles". Less than god's intervention, they might have been time-travellers.