Yahoo Autos Chinese Fusion Reactor Sustains 90 Million Degree Plasma Blast for Over 100 Seconds
Following the first successful test of the Wendelstein X-7 Stellarator-extremely sophisticated nuclear reactor in Germany-the Chinese have accomplished a wildly impressive in one of their reactors. According to the South China Morning Post, China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) was able to sustain 90 million Fahrenheit plasma (50 million Kelvin) for 102 seconds. For context, the center of the sun is thought to be only about a third as hot.
Unlike the mind-bendingly complex supercomputer-optimized shape of the X-7 Stellerator, China's EAST is torus-shaped, like a donut, and uses magnetic field to keep its plasma fields in check. At a glance, the most jaw-dropping part of its most recent test is seems to be the temperature-hotter than the sun. But in actuality, other fusion experiments have reached up into the billions of degrees and ion colliders like the LHC have been known to reach into the trillions.
