Main image via UNILAD , Sony Pictures
Remember the scene from Spider-Man 2 where Dr. Otto Octavius created an artificial sun? Well it’s happening in real life too, kind of.
China just broke the world record after scientists developed an “artificial sun” that achieved a temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds.
The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) also generated an increased plasma temperature of 160 million degrees for another 20 seconds after, more than ten times the heat of the sun.
It broke the previous record of maintaining the plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius for 100 seconds, taking a major step towards the test run of fusion reactor which aims to provide infinite clean energy through controlled nuclear fusion.
The device was dubbed as the “artificial sun” because it was designed to create controlled nuclear fusion by replicating the natural process of nuclear fusion in the sun and stars.
"The breakthrough is significant progress, and the ultimate goal should be keeping the temperature at a stable level for a long time," said Li Miao, director of the physics department of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen.
He also told Global Times that the next milestone might be to maintain the stability for a week or more saying, "the breakthrough is significant progress, and the ultimate goal should be keeping the temperature at a stable level for a long time.”
According to Daily Mail, the device was first powered up last December and uses “a powerful magnetic field to confine the hydrogen isotopes into a spherical shape, similar to a cored apple, as they are heated by microwaves into a plasma to produce fusion”.
Seen as the holy grail of sustainable energy, the success from the test takes humanity one step closer to unlimited energy for mankind in the future.
So is it similar to Dr. Otto Octavius’ artificial sun? Not really. But we sure hope that the test will lead us to a better future compared to the disaster that Doc Ock created.
Info via Global Times , Daily Mail
Filled Under :
*We reserve the right to delete comments that contain inappropriate content.