Just seven months after it announced a milestone record for plasma fusion, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has absolutely smashed it.
Their ‘artificial Sun’ tokomak reactor is has maintained a roiling loop of plasma superheated to 120 million degrees Celsius (216 million degrees Fahrenheit) for a gobsmacking 1,056 seconds, the Institute of Plasma Physics reports.
This also beats the previous record for plasma confinement of 390 seconds, set by the Tore Supra tokamak in France in 2003.