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China’s ‘artificial sun’ has got hotter than the real thing (and it’s on Earth)

The reactor reached 100 million degrees Celsius (Getty)
The reactor reached 100 million degrees Celsius (Getty)

Earlier this year, a doughnut-shaped object in a building in China blazed up to 100 million degrees Celsius – hotter than the interior of the sun.

Scientists this week announced that the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor had reached 100 million Celsius.

It’s a new record for fusion power – and could be the key to generating limitless clean energy.

Tokamak reactors hope to generate fusion energy from a plasma trapped in a magnetic field – but the key to igniting the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium atoms is temperature.

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The EAST reactor’s achievement in heating charged particles up to 100 million degrees could be a milestone on the way to developing fusion power plants.

Every nuclear reactor currently operating on Earth is a fission reactor – using energy released when heavy atoms such as uranium decay into smaller atoms, a process similar to the one used in the first nuclear weapons.

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A fusion reactor works in the opposite way, harvesting the energy released when two smaller atoms join together, releasing tiny, fast-moving particles smaller than atoms.

But to do so, companies need to find a way to harvest energy from a plasma held at millions of degrees Celsius – something that has defied researchers for decades.