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China Just Made a Major Breakthrough In Nuclear Fusion Research (techienews.co.uk)

New submitter TechnoidNash writes: China announced last week a major breakthrough in the realm of nuclear fusion research. The Chinese Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), was able to heat hydrogen gas to a temperature of near 50 million degrees Celsius for an unprecedented 102 seconds. While this is nowhere near the hottest temperature that has ever been achieved in nuclear fusion research (that distinction belongs to the Large Hadron Collider which reached 4 trillion degrees Celsius), it is the longest amount of time one has been maintained.

18 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Good job china.

    1. Re: title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Keep in mind this is China's news, the same ones who tell us Taiwan/Hong Kong/Tibet/South sea islands is belonged to China, nothing bad ever happen on Tiananmen square, there is no corruption in China (except a few to make example of, the rest of the world is polluted as bad as China (lol no) and countless other lies about their country to surpress to people/save face.

    2. Re:title by Nyder · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not all pointless. The nutjobs need to be dealt with. Look at Syria. The only one doing anything is Russia and they are doing it only for their own good and causing shitloads more suffering. Can't say what US has done is a mark of excellent, but it's all better than what Russia is ever capable of.

      Considering our policies and actions of the last 50+ years led to what is happening in Syria, I'm going with the grandparent post and say it was pointless.

      --
      Be seeing you...
    3. Re:title by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "It's not all pointless. The nutjobs need to be dealt with"

      Sorry, but the 2nd Iraq "war" was utterly pointless. It cost lives and money for what - to remove one psychopath under bogus pretenses who at least held the region together, and allow him to be replaced with 10s of thousands of psychopaths who have created anarchy in the whole region and europe. Way to go USA!

    4. Re: title by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are a lot of posts about how we can't trust China, but for any one who has followed fusion work, this should be no surprise. EAST has been one of the major research tokamaks in the world, and results like this are incremental results that were expected to come about. What is more interesting is how cheap EAST and some other Chinese fusion research facilities are, like KTX which I am more familiar with and has been both cheap and fast. Yet they still contribute new results and share info at conferences, so it is not like they are just a lagging copy of other countries.

    5. Re:title by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There's a difference between not being able to exactly predict the future and being willfully purblind in a moronic effort to get back at someone after 9/11 regardless of whether they were responsible. George W Bush was an arrogant fool and a liar.

  2. RFTA - this has not been peer reviewed by mykepredko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Very exciting until you see that the results have not been verified in any way.

    If the claim is true, I would be very interested in reading how it was accomplished and what were the conditions. I would be particularly interested in finding out if the heat was contained or if energy was being continually driven into the system.

    Claims are just that until verified and the apparatus and results are published.

  3. Re:I am not a physicist but... by sunderland56 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There have been some "big announcements" in other hard science fields from China in the past decade or two that have turned out to be bogus.

    Why pick on China? Every country on the planet has been guilty of this. Until a scientific finding has been peer reviewed, and hopefully duplicated, it's just cold fusion all over again.

  4. Re:The sun does all of this by mykepredko · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Only if "JESUS" was an acronym for:
    Just
    Every
    Stunned,
    Uneducated,
    Simpleton.

  5. Re:High vs Low by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The trouble with LENR is we can see it work, but we don't know why or how...

    Another problem is that nobody has been able to see it work reproducibly. Or work at all for that matter, in any verifiable way. The crank piece you linked does nothing to change my impression of that. As for military involvement in (let's say it) cold fusion, that does not exactly inspire confidence.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  6. Re:I am not a physicist but... by dsmatthews9379 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is not hard to do, if you have the equipment, but doing it without wrecking it is another matter. So why did they only do it once, and does their machine still work or did they burn out the liner and need to fix it?

    There is a hint in this article that the previous time limit was safety related, http://www.scmp.com/tech/scien...

    I guess if you are in a race you sometimes have to take risks to get ahead of the pack, even at the risk of a wipe-out.

    Totally worth it if they learned anything useful.

  7. Re:I am not a physicist but... by Harlequin80 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Their currency is manipulated - as is the US currency it's called Quantative Easing.
    They sell pet food that poisons pets. They sell baby formula that harms babies. - Private companies that have been prosecuted, there are heaps of US equivalents. Asbestos is one of the biggest.
      They have no respect for IP property. Why should they? They don't produce large amounts of IP so it makes sense for them to ignore IP law.
    They're poisoning their environment such that you can't see across the street due to air pollution, and can't drink the water because of some mining company upstream. - No question it is bad currently, but again every developed economy went through the period of trashing their environment. Not saying it's right but it's pretty much pot meet kettle.
    The news media is censored so that non of their citizens know any of this, except what they can see with their own 2 eyes. You haven't been there have you? Yes their media is censored but everyone knows your list.

  8. Re: I am not a physicist but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A practical fusion reactor has temperatures higher than the sun, because the sun has a horrible power density. Fusion reactions in the sun generate only about 100 wattas per cubic meter, and you need a lot more than that to get a net gain in a human built reactor of a reasonable size. The target is usually around 10 keV for DT fusion, or about 120 million K.

  9. Re: I am not a physicist but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You've just described the US.

    How is the water in Flint?

  10. Re: I am not a physicist but... by phorm · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Uh, yeah have you heard of a place called Flint, Michigan?

  11. Re:I am not a physicist but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "They have no respect for IP property"
    To be fair, "IP property" is not actually deserving of respect, so they got this one right.

  12. Re:I am not a physicist but... by camperdave · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So we shouldn't believe them because they are just like us?

    Do you need a better reason?

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  13. Re:I am not a physicist but... by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Their currency is manipulated. Their stock market has 2 books, one set you can see, the other you can't.

    Unlike the West. LOL.

    The west sells food that poisons humans. The west has no respect for personal property (unless you're a billionaire). They are poisoning their environment such that you can no longer catch a fish in the ocean whose belly isn't filled with plastic. Oh, and don't get me started on the censorship of western news media.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.