China's 'artificial sun' set a new world record on Thursday by running for 1056 seconds at high plasma temperature, the longest duration for an experimental advanced superconducting tokamak (EAST) fusion energy reactor, Xinhua News Agency reported.
It's basically been 5-10 years of well funded crash project away since the concept began being understood, but has consistently been funded at "yeah this is just never actually to happen within anyone involved's lifespan" levels instead.
EAST already scored a previous record in May, running for 101 seconds at a temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius.
Looks like the previous record was set by the same team earlier last year but the difference is they were running at higher tempratures. This is running at lower temperatures but for a much longer period of time, probably for research.
It's a common joke that fusion energy is "always 20 years away" but I swear that record was under 10 seconds in 2016 or so
Very promising :xi-plz:
It's gonna be more than 20 years but progress is steady
It's basically been 5-10 years of well funded crash project away since the concept began being understood, but has consistently been funded at "yeah this is just never actually to happen within anyone involved's lifespan" levels instead.
isn't that most problems tbh
Looks like the previous record was set by the same team earlier last year but the difference is they were running at higher tempratures. This is running at lower temperatures but for a much longer period of time, probably for research.