China’s  ‘artificial sun’ set a new record running at 70 million°C for 1,056 seconds, or over 17 minutes. The record was achieved on December 30.

According to media reports, the temperature achieved is almost five times hotter than the sun.

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The Chinese Academy of Sciences has said the continuous high-temperature plasma operation is the longest of its kind in the world.

The previous record was set in May by the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) by running for 101 seconds at a temperature of 20 million°C. The aim of EAST is to create nuclear fusion like in the sun to provide clean energy.

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Xianzu, a researcher at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was in charge of this experiment and he was the one who announced it.

“We achieved a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds in an experiment in the first half of 2021,” said Xianzu. “This time, steady-state plasma operation was sustained for 1,056 seconds at a temperature close to 70 million degrees Celsius, laying a solid scientific and experimental foundation toward the running of a fusion reactor,” he added.

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Nuclear fusion power works by colliding heavy hydrogen atoms to form helium and the process releases a lot of energy.