Continuing to develop ‘artificial sun’ for a long time, China has recently made very important developments. The system, called “Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST – The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak),” or simply referred to as “artificial Sun”, broke a new record the other day.
According to the news made by China’s official news agency Xinhua Tongxunshe, the artificial Sun managed to work at 70 million degrees Celsius for 17 minutes and 36 seconds. In other words, the artificial sun reached a temperature 5 times higher than our star, the Sun, thanks to this 17-minute period. But this record was not a temperature record.
Previously, 160 million degrees Celsius was reached:
China’s artificial Sun set a record that shocked the world last May. EAST was run at 120 million degrees Celsius for 1 minute and 41 seconds. In the same experiment, EAST was increased to 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds. In other words, EAST managed to produce temperatures 10 times higher than the Sun.
The aim of the development of EAST, which is daunting when you see these values, is to provide almost unlimited clean energy by imitating the natural reactions that occur in the stars. The reason why EAST is called an ‘artificial Sun’ is not because of the temperatures it can reach, but because it actually mimics our star, the Sun. EAST mimics the nuclear fusion reaction that powers the real Sun, using hydrogen and deuterium gases as fuel. China has invested more than $12 trillion in this project to date.