Scientists set world record in creating an 'artificial Sun'

The pursuit to create an "artificial Sun" through nuclear fusion has been a dream of scientists for quite some time, and now a team of researchers has inched a little bit more closer to making that dream a reality.

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South Korean scientists have now set a new world record with the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research (KSTAR) device, a nuclear fusion reaction that is capable of generating plasma temperatures of up to 100 million degrees Celsius, or seven times hotter than the Sun's core. The team was able to achieve this temperature for just 48 seconds, with the previous record being set in 2021 at 30 seconds.

The idea behind fusion reactors is quite simple - superheat two elements until they combine into one, which gives off heat and energy. However, maintaining the reaction is the challenging part. The most common way to achieve fusion energy is by heating hydrogen variants within a donut-shaped reactor called a tokamak.

Heating the hydrogen creates plasma, but maintaining the plasma at high temperatures has proven to be extremely difficult, with researchers from the Korean Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) saying their goal is to sustain temperatures of over 100 million degrees Celsius for 300 seconds by 2026.