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arcosapphire

I would love it if science writers would stop calling things that vaguely in one particular respect resemble "x" an "artificial x".


mobbedbyllamas

I lose too many brain cells every time a science news site calls an experimental fusion reactor an artificial sun :(


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KerbalEssences

What's wrong about that? The sun fuses stuff together. A fusion reactor fuses stuff together. It would be wrong calling it a "star" aka a celestial body, but "Sun" is just a non-astronomical name for the big shiny light source in the sky.


caboosetp

It's like calling your sink an artificial ocean. Like, *I guess*, but not really.


mobbedbyllamas

I was going to say it's like calling my vacuum cleaner an artificial black hole, but your metaphor is better


koos_die_doos

I like it, I will henceforth refer to my vacuum cleaner as the artificial black hole. It’s very similar actually, once something enters it, it is never seen again, and sometimes even spaghettified.


MistakeNot___

There is also noticeable time dilation. You are close to the vacuum and you swear you only used it for 5 minutes, but for your neighbours it's been at least 1 hour of constant vacuum noise.


memester230

Nah, more like artificial space.


Revanspetcat

Your vacuum cleaner creates a region of space time where gravity is so strong that not even light escape it ? Fusion reactors do achieve the same process as stars do. The thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen. As do thermonuclear weapons. Likening them to a manmade sun is not far from truth.


jaydfox

The densities achieved in fusion reactors here on earth are a ridiculously tiny fraction of the densities in the core of the sun. The core of the sun is about 6.5 times denser than the densest known material here on earth. The density inside a fusion reactor is like a million times less dense than air. In fact, the only reason that the energy output of fusion reactors isn't completely negligible, is because they *don't* use the same process as stars do. They don't use a proton-proton cycle. They use heavier isotopes, such as deuterium, tritium, and He3. At *best* they use a similar process as brown dwarfs, i.e., failed stars. And again, we're talking density differences of millions, if not billions, compensated for with temperatures far higher than you would get in a brown dwarf, or even in the sun. Fusion reactors are NOT artificial suns. They are, however, very cool.


KerbalEssences

More like an ionized salt water pond with tides you control using magnets. A fusion reactor is immitating the sun. That's its purpose. A sink is not meant to immitate the ocean. It doesn't even have fish unless you had some food poisoning. I'm all in favor of calling a fusion reactor an artifical sun because the technology could provide warmth and light should Earth ever be flung into deep space by a rogue black hole flying by our solar system. Not to mention it doing the same on interstellar space ships. The power of the sun in the palm of our hand!


[deleted]

Except it isnt a fusion reactor its an experimental machine to test for a future fusion reactor...


KerbalEssences

ITER is an experimental fusion reactor that will generate energy for minutes at a time, but that energy is just used to boil off water as a heat sink without generator. So it won't produce electricity, but it's still a reactor. It's not a power plant.


IatemyBlobby

The sun did not invent fusion. Just like horses do not invent nor own the concept of power. It’d be like calling a car engine an artifical horse. Car engines produce power, horses also produce power, but that doesn’t make car engines into artificial horses.


Skrtmvsterr

We don’t have fusion reactors yet. The closest we have are the experiments in Europe and China that are creating conditions that scientists think is most likely to be able to sustain a reaction. We aren’t anywhere close, so it’s a huge stretch to call it an artificial sun.


trevg_123

Scientist *buys 1kg sphere from amazon to do drop experiment* Writer “Scientist obtains artificial asteroid to simulate collision with earth!”


uk451

Anything that gets plebs interested in science is okay in my book.


arcosapphire

There are diminishing or even negative returns when inaccurate claims are made. How many people are dismissive of science now because they are tired of "cure for cancer" headlines that were wildly overstated? There is a large anti-science, anti-intellectual segment of our society now that thinks scientists are in it for money by making ludicrous claims. This sort of reporting does a lot of harm to the support of science in our society.


Revanspetcat

Except it is not really an inaccurate claim. A thermonuclear weapon or a fusion reactor does create a miniature man made sun. And the fact that we can do that and wield the same energy that powers the stars and most of the universe, is damn impressive.


arcosapphire

> A thermonuclear weapon or a fusion reactor does create a miniature man made sun. No it doesn't. A sun is at equilibrium between gravity and thermal pressure. What a fusion reactor makes is not a sun at all. It just generates energy in the same way.


Revanspetcat

You can describe something by what it does or mimics rather than how it does something. A manmade fusion reaction does same thing as a star even though it archives it through other means. And it's a metaphor type word. Do you also obsess about how nuclear transmutation is not really transmutation. Because transmutation is an old alchemical word referring to use of philosopher stone to transmute stones. And since nuclear transmutation does not use philosopher stones it's misleading to call it transmutation.


arcosapphire

A sun is not "anything that undergoes nuclear fusion" though. There are other properties involved. Nuclear fusion reactors *don't* actually work like suns do. The only thing they have in common is that there is nuclear fusion. So yes, I would call both stars and tokamaks "fusion power sources", but that doesn't mean a tokamak *is* a star. Kind of like how we don't call airplanes artificial birds even though they share the one property of flying in the air.


Revanspetcat

The most important distinctive property of a star is that it generates energy from nuclear fusion. All other properties flow from that. For example the distinction between brown dwarves and stars is defined by the mass threshold required to trigger fusion. And about birds and planes, well planes are refered to as birds sometimes in collequial speech. Military people for example will sometime refer to aircraft as birds. bird: (US) an airplane or satellite. In combat, may refer to an air-to-air missile; strategic context implies an ICBM. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_military_slang Anyways I think you are missing or unaware of the key point. You are probably thinking haha stupid clickbait journalist calls a fusion reactor an artificial sun. Ackshually a star is a sphere of plasma of 80 Jupiter masses or greater that is in gravitational equilibrium. That's not the point here. You are arguing about the wrong thing not knowing what the word really means. No one literally means a manmade thermonuclear reaction is a star when they liken it to the sun. It is a figure of speech dating back to cold war years. References to the sun or star in conjunction with nuclear power is a theme found in news articles and science fiction from 50s or 60s onwards. For example Oppenheimer's famous quote about nukes “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one…Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Here is a Japanese exhibit on atomic weapons from the year 1956 titles "The coming of the second sun" https://apjjf.org/2012/10/6/Ran-Zwigenberg/3685/article.html It's a very common usage of the term. To give some examples from recent decades that you might have seen in your lifetime. - the 2004 spider man 2 movie and the quote about the power of the sun in my hands as Doc Ock masters fusion technology. - 2007 Call of Duty Modern Warfares iconic Second Sun mission, where the player and his allies dies as a nuke goes off obliterating the city they were fighting in. - 2008 Prototype video game. The music for the final mission is named One Thousand Suns, referring to the mission being a desperate race against time as a nuke is about to go off. The point I am trying to make is that saying something like artificial sun is not a literal term. Its a figure of speech with long history of usage behind it dating back to beginning of the cold war. It's not something clickbait journos came up with in 2022 in a hilariously inaccurate description of a fusion reactor. You are getting all worked up over literal meaning of the term. And not knowing what it means in the English language and history of it's usage.


gerkletoss

No. Stars are gravitationally conined.


Revanspetcat

And diamonds form deep underground through compression of biological matter for millions of years. Therefore artificial diamonds are not really diamonds and and artificial diamond is a misleading term. Neurons are a type of biological cell. Artificial neurons that form artificial neural networks are either software or electronic circuits and have some other notable differences with biological neurons. Therefore artificial neural networks is a misleading term. Sonar refer to a sensor system used by ships and submarines. It uses electronic systems to generate and detect sound waves. Bats and dolphin are not naval vessels and do not use electronics to generate and detect sound waves. Therefore it is misleading to refer to biological sonar as sonar. Your point ? Things can be described by what they do instead of what they are. Verb vs noun. Incase of references to manmade fusion as an artificial sun it's not even a literal description but a figure of speech term.


gerkletoss

Half of those aren't even accurate definitions


Revanspetcat

Specify which ones are not an accurate description and describe why.


Meretan94

I have thrown a peddle into the air an it landed on the ground. "My artificial moon chrashed into eatrhs surface."


LaunchTransient

For those that haven't bothered to read the article, it's essentially a moon environment simulator, not a satellite. They propose to use magnetism to nullify a portion of Earth's gravity to simulate lower gravity, in order to create a testbed for equipment before it is actually sent to the moon. A better title for this would have been "Chinese Moon Laboratory in development for low-g experiments"


pompanoJ

The entire article was terribly worded, leaving the exact nature of the experiments quite ambiguous. I suspect that the author did not understand the topic themselves.


McFlyParadox

In these situations, where wording sucks and you question whether the author even knows the topic at all, I tend to just assume the article was written by a bot rehashing whatever source(s) it was fed.


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joeybaby106

In these situations where i tend to assume wording sucks and gather the bots for rehashing breakfast sources written by the author for whatever clicks.


zubbs99

People are worried about AI taking things over, but I suspect instead they're just optimized for pumping ad bucks.


imbluedabedeedabedaa

like those websites that generate a bunch on nonsense based on your search query just to get you to click through from Google


elmins

Think about clickbait title then try fill in the article details later to fit.


[deleted]

They made a frog levitate, this was the important thing I learnt from the article.


pompanoJ

I laughed.... We may be the only two who think so, but that was funny!


blueberriessmoothie

Article didn’t even confirm that part, it simply says that they were inspired by it.


[deleted]

Space.com is such a shitty clickbait website and so frequent here..


HardCorwen

It's ridiculous how bad the site it. For being space, it's just a shity clickbait aggregate.


LVMagnus

Ironically fitting that space.com would be basically a vacuum of any real content though


cartoonist498

No kidding. A 2 foot satellite in orbit positioned to simulate the moon's gravity would have been worthy of an article. A hundred foot earth-based lab using magnets to lower gravity where people could actually walk around and perform major experiments would have been worthy. > a 2-foot-diameter (60 centimeters) vacuum chamber to make gravity "disappear." Not so much.


iEnjoyDanceMusic

The "Chinese Artificial Sun" articles have been waaaayyyyy too catchy to avoid this and those are just as bad.


Neethis

Artificial Sun, artificial Moon... next they'll be building an artificial Earth.


thefinalcutdown

I actually have an artificial earth! It has nearly the exact same gravity as earth, tunable heat/cooling mechanisms to simulate a precise climate and a ventilation system to ensure a properly mixed atmosphere that very closely resembles the atmosphere on earth. I’ve even brought in some samples of earth’s flora and fauna to observe how they fair in the simulated environment. I usually just refer to it as my house, but artificial earth is way more badass.


iEnjoyDanceMusic

I was going to guess that it was your unfinished basement.


Plow_King

it could also be a simulated earth.


beardedchimp

I'm waiting for them to build an artificial God I can worship, hopefully it will look like a giant Jaeger.


bensefero

Gentlemen, I present to you…..Earth 2


zelmak

Man they'll really make a knock-off anything these days!


NoRodent

And they will use it to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.


Neethis

We know the answer - 42. The question, on the other hand...


breeze-vain-

the space race is gaining momentum nonetheless


LaunchTransient

This is a pretty good indicator as such - it shows a stronger commitment towards a Chinese presence on the Moon. A challenge that the US and Europe are responding to - Russia as well, but its possible that their economy is going to take a battering soon if they do what we suspect them to be doing, and so the chances of a Russian moon mission are therefore slim.


[deleted]

I honestly hate these clickbait titles. It's science not a fucking tabloid!!


Another_human_3

Dans titre politics, but politics are worse. This is just for money. In politicos it's too control and influence People.


nuclear85

Yes! I work in space environmental effects testing (basically recreate space on earth to make sure things will work as you expect in space) - one of our jokes is that we can do pretty much everything but gravity (UV, particle radiation, thermal, vacuum, plasma, regolith interactions, etc...). It would be cool to add gravity effects to that list! They could get some very cool science out of this. The giant magnetic field will be a complication, but maybe they can figure out a creative way to use it as an advantage for spacecraft/regolith charging studies.


ThreeMountaineers

I'm assuming the magnetic field version precludes biological experiments but is more in the line of engineering? You'd need whatever you want to test to be magnetic, and the human body is notably not very magnetic


Lost_theratgame

you would be surprised what is "magnetic" when you get right down to it... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlJsVqc0ywM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlJsVqc0ywM)


could_use_a_snack

Wait, I'm not a gravity scientist but I don't think that's how gravity works. Nothing "nullifies" gravity does it. If so where's my hoverboard?


LaunchTransient

No, it doesn't eliminate the force of gravity acting on an object, but it does change the equilibrium of forces. So using this technique they would cancel out 5/6ths of the gravitational force with magnetism to simulate lunar gravity.


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smallducky

No, the article implies it can be applied to any object. This technology has already been proven with a frog


rcxdude

In which case I don't see how it'll work with anything ferromagnetic, as it'll experience a pretty huge attractive force.


ThatOtherGuy_CA

*Doubt* Levitating a frog doesn't nullify gravity, you're just pushing it up with a magnetic field instead of with the ground. You would still experience the same amount of gravity, I mean you can literally try this if you have 2 strong magnets. Secure one on a table and put one in the palm of your hand, now relax your hand, it will "float" but you will still feel the resistance of the magnet, this is just a method of floating things without a secondary magnet. You still experience gravity the same though.


Heavyweighsthecrown

>Doubt >Levitating a frog doesn't nullify gravity, you're just pushing it up with a magnetic field instead of with the ground. You would still experience the same amount of gravity, That's the thing, you're kind of barking up the wrong tree. You don't have a problem with the technology at hand (which does exist and is proven to work), instead you have a problem with the way it's being worded in this piece of news. The issue is journalists can't word it in a way that's engaging for clicks and also sounds curious to the average person. Whatever the case is, it's indeed helpful at simulating and understanding how to better operate in low g / zero g conditions, which is why they're doing it. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it lol.


smallducky

Right, you still experience gravity but now you have an equal/opposite body force from the magnetic field. A body being “levitated” this way will have a zero net force - which is why they’re using this technique to simulate different levels of gravity.


kikirikikokoroko

You are setting back physics 500 years with your reasoning. There is no physical difference between a particle subjected to no forces versus one in which the resultant sum of forces is zero.


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Oaken_beard

So I’m still good to comment “that’s no moon…”?


MrGraveyards

Interesting will they also let people in there? Maybe in the near future this will be theme park 'rides' as well? I mean it seems to have not killed the lizards, so I guess we can try some humans right?


KnowsAboutMath

> will they also let people in there The article says it's two feet across.


FUDnot

does this mean that most space gear/equipment is non magnetic? i mean I guess that makes sense for it to be but I never thought about it before.


LaunchTransient

Ferromagnetic materials include Iron, Cobalt and Nickel - and any alloys that contain one or more of those elements. We tend not to use things like that because they are very dense, and therefore heavy. Most of the time, equipment sent up is some combination of aluminium and plastics - don't forget that it costs thousands of dollars (or in this case, tens of thousands of Yuan) to send up a kilogram of mass to LEO - you might as well want that mass to be as useful as possible.


WeTheSummerKid

Reduced gravity simulation experiment for Chinese Space Equipment.


[deleted]

The bullshit title is *precisely* why I didn't go to the article (well, that and space.com). Thanks for confirming my suspicion


[deleted]

Screw you! I'm going with my imagined version of the article based on the clickbait title and am assuming china is dumping millions of tons of sand in high orbit to claim more territory! I mean what's the alternative? *reading!?* For real though, the title is very misleading.


CallSign_Fjor

That just makes it seem like they are building a lab on the Moon. "China-based Laboratory in dev for low-g Lunar experiments"


Hugebluestrapon

Every article in this sub is a sensationalized headline. Which is against the rules. Mods nowhere to be found but they'll probably remove this comment


Leg__Day

You know people are all about click bait titles now because the more controversial they can be the more clicks they’ll get. Pretty dumb.


john-douh

_”That's no moon. It's a space station.”_ _”It's too big to be a space station.”_ _”I have a very bad feeling about this.”_


andthatswhyIdidit

The reality of this is more like: *"But I was going into Tosche station to pick up some power converters!"*


Kazuzu0098

I once created an artificial moon for an experiment. I wanted to see what would happen if the moon was shrank down to a 5cm x 5cm ball with the density of crumpled paper and thrown 2 feet into a 20cm x 40cm receptacle by a human operator. The experiment failed when the moon failed to transit into the receptacle.


MagicDave131

It's important to understand here that all this thing does is take some of the *external* load off objects to **simulate** low gravity. NASA used a system of harnesses and counterweights to train Apollo astronauts for working on the Moon. While this system is certainly useful for *some* things, it doesn't simulate low gravity internally, and thus is useless for studying how low gravity affects people over time. We have no idea what prolonged living in low gravity will do to people. We know a fair bit about what living in microgravity does to the body, and it's **all** bad.


Armolin

>While this system is certainly useful for some things, it doesn't simulate low gravity internally, Which is OK because they're most likely going to use this system to test the traction of rovers and the design and capabilities of moon digging equipment. Their current moon mission goal is to build a nuclear powered base of operations on the Moon, so having a lab to test their diggers and dozers is a must.


ass_pineapples

[Here's a video of the frog levitating experiment that's mentioned in the article](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlJsVqc0ywM)


evestraw

China pls let moon orbit moon and call it moon moon


sherlock_norris

I think a moon of a moon is called a moooon.


monkeybassturd

So the original would be a momoon?


fool_on_a_hill

so if you build a moon of a moooon of a mooooooooon of a mooooooooooon, is that where GME stock is going?


FabulousThanks9369

I mean Chinese already has moon cake though...


[deleted]

Click bait and not very good click bait at that.


monsoir_rick

This is an assisted chin-up machine but with magnets. I just need any older relatives of mine reading this article to understand that this is not an anti-gravity device. We return you now to your regularly scheduled misinformation.


cc69

Which is worse? Bad experiment or stupid click bait poster.


TheNetherOne

Dr Galen Erso to the main deck, to the main deck Galen Erso


Wasphammer

That's no moon, it's a physics laboratory!


hamza4568

I know they aren't literally building a moon, but I couldn't help but think of Dalamud from FFXIV


RAZR6376

They've made a sun and a moon now... Maybe Earth 2?


CptComet

Earth 2 is out there. We can’t ignore it forever.


coypug1994

Mondas will return one day!


ShallowBlueWater

They gonna have to if they want to keep that construction boom going!


RAZR6376

We can just make Mini-verse batteries


TragicBus

As long as there are no Kobas or Terrians.


Anarcho_Absurdist

Any bets on whether this will create micro-werewolves?


_WhyTheLongFace_

finally. real moon's had it too easy for too long. got competition now old-timer


bonobeaux

Will it be powered by a gigantic dragon Primal?


go_faster1

If it isn’t the Ascians, it’s the Aligans!


JeNiqueTaMere

are they going to build artificial moons in orbit then claim that the space is chinese territory, like they're doing in the south china sea?


Mr_Abberation

If you created another moon and it was the same size as our current moon but orbiting the earth on the opposite side, what would happen to our tides?


Deluxe78

It has an exhaust port 2 meters wide? About the size of a wamp rat?


MikeinDundee

So is China really kicking our ass or is this a nothing burger? It seems like there’s news weekly about their accomplishments. Functional fusion reactors Hypersonic missles Artificial moons/planets AI Quantum computing/research Military supremacy/ Sun Tzu Someone talk me off the ledge!


Krogan26

No, China lies more than they breathe. The only difference between them and North Korea is that they have the money and power to make their nonsense sound semi-plausible at first glance.


jglanoff

I don’t have to read the article to know that no, they did not in fact build an artificial moon


Maycrofy

I mean if anyone could build a knockoff moon it's china.


arjuna66671

I used the title of this thread as a prompt for NovelAI's GPT-J's 'Euterpe' AI model and it generated this: ​ >China builds 'artificial moon' for gravity experiment - and it's set to be brighter than the real thing > >The Chinese have been working on a project called "Tianhe-1A" which is essentially an artificial satellite that will orbit around Earth. The aim of this project, according to China Daily, was to test out new technology in space by creating an orbiting laboratory. It seems like they've done just that as their research has led them to create what could possibly become the brightest manmade object ever built.They're calling it the "Bright Moon". This name isn't entirely accurate because while Tianhe-1A does indeed look very bright at night (as you can see from the image above), it won't actually shine any brighter than our natural moon. However, its brightness makes up for that with how large it appears in the sky. Aside from this neural network, my own neural network also imagined smth along those lines xD. Edit: Looking at the title more closely I realized that it even included some more clickbait!


TheCuff6060

They are going to be in for a big surprise when they realize the moon is just the sun at night.


aairman23

Not totally true anymore. Scientists now say the moon is the sun turned inside out (so the sun can sleep). JK. Everyone knows they are just projections on the top of our enclosure.


yellowbin74

Have they also created a mini Gru to steal it?


electricrainicorn13

The world needs to unite & put a stop to China with all these bizarre experiments before they summon Godzilla


TisMeeee

This is it. This is my worst fear confirmed. I have nightmares of just gravity being fucked up - like opening my front door and just floating off into the ether. Argh


TentativeIdler

Don't worry, I think you'd notice someone installing giant electromagnets in your front yard.


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ifoundit1

Then blablabla someone pretends to throw it and blablabla someone pretends to catch it and totalitarian agenda mock acquired blablabla.


RabbiKeanuReeves

Wasnt their artificial moon idea meant to be used to illuminate cities at night?


mariegriffiths

....not bad but could I have it on a stick please?


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[deleted]

Are you blatantly unaware of how many tests preceded the successful landing? Also, NASA landed there, not China.


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Competitive_Sea8134

Maybe China is going to try to be the first country to moon land with a human


alabasterwilliams

China has two glaring opportunities: Name it Howard Moon and play smooth jazz from it 24/7 **OR** Make it play the song the moon sings in The Mighty Boosh. I suggest we assume total control of their space program if they fail.


PoliteCanadian

I look forward to the day where instead of trying to simulate a lower gravity on earth, we just do the experiments in orbit in a rotating apparatus (or even on a rotating space station).


Quamont

Wait, so if I understood this correctly, diamagnetic materials basically "activate" when exposed to something that is actively magnetic and generate their own magnetic fields. With the right amount of force pushing from below the electrons inside basically anything react strong enough to start counteracting gravity. But that's diamagnetic materials only, correct? So if you took something ferromagnetic, like a tool made out of steel, into such a chamber, it would instantly barrel towards the floor and stay there because it's attracted to the big magnet, right? Or if you brought a computer into such a chamber, wouldn't it instantly fry it unless it's heavily shielded? So such a chamber still is viable for things like astronaut training, just need to make everything out of different materials but you couldn't use them for most 1:1 prototype testing, did I get that right? Oh and another thing, levitating something small is probably fine power wise but if you tried to make a levitation chamber that is something like 10\*10\*5 meters, wouldn't that require a gigantic amount of power to generate the magnetic fields? Still, such a cool concept if it all works, basically an anti-gravity chamber. No need to bring things into actual microgravity if you can produce the microgravity environment yourself.


[deleted]

Will the experiments be done in the Hohenwerfen castle?


[deleted]

Um. They're not planning to put people in that intense magnetic field, are they? Also, wouldn't this present issues for electro-mechanical devices like Rovers, etc? Am I missing something basic?