China's experimental 'artificial sun' creates record as it heats at 70 mn degrees Celsius

The sun is no longer the hottest entity in our solar system as China's Experiential Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor also called the 'artificial sun' has surpassed the former in terms of temperature. Meant to create "unlimited clean energy" by mimicking the reactions occurring on the Sun's surface, the reactor burned at a whopping 70 million degrees for a little over 17 minutes in the latest experiment. The reactor has been in operation since 2006 and since then it has been used to harness the power of nuclear fusion, a process that powers the Sun. 

A reactor 55 million degrees hotter than the real sun

After the latest experiment, which started in December 2021 and will continue till June 2022, the reactor is way past the highest temperature estimated on the real Sun. The EAST was reportedly turned on for 1,056 seconds and was heated up to 70 million degrees, making it 55 million degrees more than the temperature at the Sun's core (15 million degrees). According to a report by the New York Post, Gong Xianzu, a researcher at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said, "The recent operation lays a solid scientific and experimental foundation towards the running of a fusion reactor". 

Located at the Hefei Institute of Physical Science in China's Anhui province, the reactor uses hydrogen and deuterium gases as fuel and has been built at a cost of £701 million. Interestingly, Song Yuntao from the Hefei Institute of Physical Science said that scientists are further working towards the nuclear reactor which would hopefully generate within the next two decades. "Five years from now, we will start to build our fusion reactor, which will need another 10 years of construction. After that is built we will construct the power generator and start generating power by around 2040", Yuntao said as per the New York Post. Earlier in June 2021, the reactor had set a record of gaining a plasma temperature of 120 million Celsius for 101 seconds and 160 million Celsius for 20 seconds.

Image: Twitter/@metesohtaoglu