China unveils world’s largest centrifuge with 300 times Earth’s gravity

China has unveiled the world’s largest centrifuge with capacity to produce 300 times the gravity of planet Earth and accommodate 20 tons of weight.

According to reports by a local news outlet on 29 September, the centrifuge was built as one of the core components of the Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF).

Currently under construction in Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang Province, CHIEF features three centrifuges and 18 in-flight devices supporting six experimental cabins with more powerful centrifuges under construction.

A scientific breakthrough 

Hypergravity is a gravitational force that surpasses that of the Earth’s surface and very few technologies such as rollercoasters and astronaut launches attain it.

The new centrifuge is able to generate 1,500G, which is staggering compared to the 5G astronauts reach at launch. 

Measuring 6.4 meters in radius, the machine sits in the “CHIEF1300” machine hall, a 230-square-meter circular basement where it spins at high speed to generate the required gravity.

The chief engineer of the facility, Ling Daosheng at Zhejiang University said:

“CHIEF1300 was placed below ground level, and was equipped with vacuum and wall-cooling setups to mitigate the adverse influences of air resistance and machine heating.” 

The facility is open to top research groups in the world and the scientists are ready to partner to accelerate scientific discovery.

To what end?

Most people reading this headline would wonder why the Chinese had to build such a gigantic centrifuge. 

According to Chen Yunmin from Zhejiang University, the chief scientist of the facility, it is used to predict future catastrophes within a compressed timeframe.

“In a hypergravity field, researchers can simulate real-world hydrogeological catastrophes, geological evolution and extreme environments in bench-top scale models within a reasonable timeframe.” 

With CHIEF, a 1-meter model simulates events that would occur on a 100-meter scale at 100G, and a contaminant-plume journey that would take a century in the field is condensed to only 3.65 days in the lab, allowing them to easily compress time.

Scientists have already used the facility to simulate strong earthquakes and quantified the effect of a 4-meter-high wave and 20-meter tsunami to select sites for offshore wind farms.