South Korea’s artificial sun smashed a world record after running at more than 100 million degrees for 20 seconds.
The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR), a superconducting fusion device, is key to the 2020 KSTAR Plasma Campaign.
Echoing the race for nuclear fusion seen in China and other countries across Europe, the KSTAR is built to recreate the sun’s fusion reactions on Earth. Basically, researchers will hold the power of the sun in the palm of their hands.
Until now, no other fusion device had been capable of maintaining temperatures of 100 million degrees or higher for 10 seconds or more. Think of Spider-Man 2; while fictional, it’s indicative of the difficulty in maintaining a plasma state in the fusion device at immense temperatures for long periods.
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