Man-made artificial sun in China produces 50 million degrees UHT for 102 seconds

In a breakthrough, a ‘man-made’ sun experiment in China has successfully produced long pulse plasma discharge at a temperature of more than 50 million degrees - the longest discharge at such a high temperature. The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), an artificial sun experiment developed by Hefei Institute of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Science, realised a ultra-high temperature (UHT) long pulse plasma discharge for 102 seconds as of January.

“An artificial sun can provide limitless clean energy through controlled thermonuclear fusion,” Xu Jiannan, from the China Academy of Engineering Physics, told ‘People’s Daily Online’.

The light and heat of the Sun come from two of hydrogen’s radioactove isotopes - deuterium and tritium. These release a huge amount of energy during the process of fusion into a helium atom. The artificial sun imitates this fusion process.