China close to creating "artificial sun" power source to end fossil fuel use

[CougarKing]

Will this end reliance on fossil fuels? Or will this turn into another Hadron collider and suck the whole Earth into a black hole? hehehehe. :blotto:

Yahoo News

China Close To Creating ‘Artificial Sun’ That Could End Reliance On Fossil Fuels

Yahoo News
February 8, 2016

Chinese scientists have managed to create a hydrogen gas that is three times hotter than the sun.

The artificial solar energy could eventually be used as an inexhaustible source of power, ending reliance on fossil fuels and solving the world energy crisis.

Chinese boffins created the gas in a huge magnetic fusion reactor at the Institute of Physical Science in Hefei.

Invented by Soviet scientists in the 1950s, the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) features a massive metallic doughtnut-shaped chamber twisted into a figure of eight.

Researchers were able to use the reactor to produce temperatures of 50 million Kelvins (49.999 million°C) and maintain them for 102 seconds.

The core of the sun is believed to around 15 million Kelvins.

Although a previous experiment by German scientists claims to have produced temperatures hotter than this, it was unable to sustain them for as long.

While the news is an important breakthrough, it could still take decades to perfect the process so that it can be used as a constant power source.

 

[a_majoor]

Fusion energy has been 20 years away for the last 50 years. Best of luck to these scientists.

 

[Towards_the_gap]

The title of this post is reminiscent of that soviet plan to put giant mirrors in space so the workers could produce goods for the revolution 24 hours a day.



No no no, it's not a James Bond plot....this actually happened....

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-man-who-turned-night-into-day

 

[Bearpaw]

The theoretical feasibility of fusion has been shown in experiments where Lawson's criterion has been exceeded i.e.

(plasma Temperature)*(plasma Density)*(plasma confinement time) > L

where L = 1.5*10^20 (MKS) or    L = 1.5*10^14 (CGS)

ITER will start exploring the technical feasibility of fusion in about 10 years time.  Optimistically ITER could show technical feasibility around 2035 - 2040.

ITER will output 10 times the input energy----the technical problems are still extremely difficult----the principal difficulty is to confine the plasma in a stable way.  There have been recent advances in the mathematics of plasma dynamics which are promising for these problems.

In the most optimistic case do not expect large scale fusion reactors before 2050 - 2060.


Bearpaw