New world record! China’s ’artificial sun’ burned five times hotter than real one, for over 17 mins

China’s “artificial sun” set new world record in sustained high temperatures The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), a nuclear fusion reactor research facility ran at 70 million degrees Celsius for as long as 1,056 seconds, or 17 minutes, 36 seconds) This comes after EAST achieved a previous milestone in May running at a plasma – or hot gas – temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds The facility is called “artificial sun”, because it mimics the nuclear fusion reaction that powers the real Sun which uses hydrogen and deuterium gases as fuel That is considered the “ultimate energy” for a carbon-neutral energy future, having minimal waste products Located in central China’s Anhui Province, EAST is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) facility a global big science project second only to the International Space Station in size It is being jointly constructed by China, the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US Its success is signi