Hey everyone! Did you know that scientists in the Chinese mainland have created an “artificial sun” that just broke a world record? 🌞
On Monday, their super-powerful machine kept a super-hot plasma at over 100 million degrees Celsius for 1,066 seconds! That’s more than 17 minutes! 😮
This is a huge deal because it brings us one step closer to making clean and unlimited energy, just like the real Sun does!
Their machine is called EAST, which stands for Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak. It’s located in Hefei, in east China’s Anhui Province.
A Tokamak is like a giant donut-shaped device that can trap super-hot plasma using powerful magnets. Think of it as a magnetic bottle holding the hottest stuff in the universe!
Plasma is a super-hot, charged gas that’s kind of like a soup made of tiny particles. In the Sun, hydrogen atoms fuse together to create helium, giving off tons of energy. This process is called nuclear fusion.
They ran EAST in something called H-mode, which helps keep the plasma stable and hot by reducing turbulence (like calming down a stormy sea). This makes it easier to contain the energy.
By running the machine for over 17 minutes at these high temperatures, scientists are learning how to build future fusion reactors that could give us endless clean energy! 💡⚡
EAST has been breaking records before. Earlier this year, it achieved 403 seconds, and now they’ve more than doubled that!
Isn’t it amazing what science can do? Maybe one day, thanks to discoveries like this, we’ll all have clean energy powered by fusion! 🚀
Reference(s):
China's 'artificial sun' sets new world record: 100m C for 1,066 sec
cgtn.com
