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[royox]

China's 'artificial sun' reaches 100 million degrees Celsius marking milestone for nuclear fusion

Chinese nuclear scientists have reached an important milestone in the global quest to harness energy from nuclear fusion, a process that occurs naturally in the sun.

The "artificial sun" is designed to replicate the fusion process that occurs in the sun

To put that in perspective, the temperature at the core of the sun is said to be about 15 million degrees Celsius, making the plasma in China's "artificial sun" more than six times hotter than the original.

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-15/china-attempts-to-create-an-artificial-sun/10495536



I guess the next step is China creating their own artificial Earth and Solar sistem lol.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

This is pretty neat. However, I am sad it isn't floating around in the sky blasting beams of energy down. We'll see how stable/reliable this ends up being.

 

[royox]

This is pretty neat. However, I am sad it isn't floating around in the sky blasting beams of energy down. We'll see how stable/reliable this ends up being.

Well there's this new rumour about California's fire being caused by some sort of Energy Weapon from space...

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Well there's this new rumour about California's fire being caused by some sort of Energy Weapon from space...

Oh, in Michigan we just call that 'the sun'.

But still... gets us closer to Akira.

 

[Joelenheimer]

Spider-Man 2 did it first.

 

[Insane Metal]

That's pretty awesome if you consider that 100M degrees is the temperature needed to fuse atoms and actually make energy from that. This is a very important step.

 

[Chairman Tickles]

They kept up the reaction (meaning they kept the plasma contained) for ~10-100 seconds. This is very significant as the pressures and temps far exceed the core of our own star. We're now playing with some seriously novel physics on the macro scale. Particle accelerators achieve higher temps and pressures, but at sub-atomic scales.

This achievement will bring further improvements to Fusion technology and open up new possibilities. The grand goal is a controlled, sustained fusion reaction so it can be tapped into for power generation.

That's pretty awesome if you consider that 100M degrees is the temperature needed to fuse atoms

You need much less temp for fusion, this is just more efficient at this scale and with the readily available fusing elements used, and makes net energy output fusion on earth possible.

 

[off duty ninja]

To my uneducated brain this seems... dangerous?

 

[Chairman Tickles]

Not really. The fusion reaction itself is dependent on the containment field. If that craps out it shuts down and that's that. No dangerous radiation or gases released. No big explosions.

Think about how massive our sun is, and how potentially dangerous it is due to magnetic field instabilities leading to potential flares larger than the earth itself. And yet we are still here. This is so much safer than what nature provides.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

This is pretty neat. However, I am sad it isn't floating around in the sky blasting beams of energy down. We'll see how stable/reliable this ends up being.

LOL. What happened to all those sci-fi articles saying giant mirrors in space would reflect beams of sunlight on Earth 24/7?

 

[EverydayBeast]

 

[EverydayBeast]

Combined with solar panels you could have twice the energy of the OG sun

 

[WaterAstro]

To my uneducated brain this seems... dangerous?

Fusion is safe, fission is super dangerous.

Though I doubt this whole thing. China likes to claim a lot of things just to look good.
In France 35 nations are currently making ITER, which is a mega joint project since the 2007. It even involves China, so how China just suddenly say they accomplished fusion on their own just seems shady.

 

[off duty ninja]

Fusion is safe, fission is super dangerous.

Though I doubt this whole thing. China likes to claim a lot of things just to look good.
In France 35 nations are currently making ITER, which is a mega joint project since the 2007. It even involves China, so how China just suddenly say they accomplished fusion on their own just seems shady.

Posturing, that’s definitely a thing countries do.

People say the science is safe but creating something hotter than the sun right here on earth no matter how small or “contained” just kinda blows my mind.

 

[DiscoJer]

Nuclear Fusion has been 20 years away for the last 50 years.