{"id":87815,"date":"2019-02-16T10:22:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T18:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/china-made-an-artificial-star-thats-6-times-as-hot-as-the-sun-and-it-could-be-the-future-of-energy"},"modified":"2019-02-16T10:22:21","modified_gmt":"2019-02-16T18:22:21","slug":"china-made-an-artificial-star-thats-6-times-as-hot-as-the-sun-and-it-could-be-the-future-of-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/china-made-an-artificial-star-thats-6-times-as-hot-as-the-sun-and-it-could-be-the-future-of-energy","title":{"rendered":"China made an artificial star that\u2019s 6 times as hot as the sun, and it could be the future of energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Imagine if we could replace fossil fuels with our very own stars. And no, we\u2019re not talking about solar power: We\u2019re talking nuclear fusion. And recent research is helping us get there. Meet the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, or EAST.<\/p>\n

EAST is a fusion reactor based in Hefei, China. And it can now reach temperatures more than six times as hot as the sun. Let\u2019s take a look at what\u2019s happening inside. Fusion occurs when two lightweight atoms combine into a single, larger one, releasing energy in the process. It sounds simple enough, but it\u2019s not easy to pull off. Because those two atoms share a positive charge. And just like two opposing magnets, those positive atoms repel each other.<\/p>\n

Stars, like our sun, have a great way of overcoming this repulsion \u2026 their massive size, which creates a tremendous amount of pressure in their cores \u2026 So the atoms are forced closer together making them more likely to collide. There\u2019s just one problem: We don\u2019t have the technology to recreate that kind of pressure on Earth.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine if we could replace fossil fuels with our very own stars. And no, we\u2019re not talking about solar power: We\u2019re talking nuclear fusion. And recent research is helping us get there. Meet the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, or EAST. EAST is a fusion reactor based in Hefei, China. And it can now reach temperatures [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,48,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-particle-physics","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}