China broke a record with its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) fusion reactor when it sustained a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds. That is 10 times hotter than the core temperature of the sun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reactor was also able to sustain a temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius for 20 seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For perspective, the core of our solar system\u2019s Sun \u201conly\u201d reaches about 15 million degrees Celsius. <\/em>So, for a moment, the reactor got more than 10 times hotter than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe breakthrough is significant progress, and the ultimate goal should be keeping the temperature at a stable level for a long time,\u201d said Li Miao, the director of the department of physics at the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, to the Global Times. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The reactor smashed its previously reached record temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lin Boqiang, the director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research at Xiamen University, told the Global Times <\/em>that nuclear fusion ultimately represents the future for clean energy \u2014 though he said that it is likely going to be decades before a working reactor emerges from experimental stages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n