Chinese scientists have set a new record for artificial sun technology – nearly doubling the burn time of extremely hot plasma in near perfect conditions. The team generated and maintained the plasma at a temperature 10 times that of the sun’s core for more than 100 seconds, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said in a statement. The experiment was conducted at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak facility in Hefei, Anhui province, where the previous world record – maintaining that temperature for about a minute – was set last year. Similar experiments in other countries have created plasmas that lasted longer but were less stable and difficult to control for the purpose of power generation. “This is a breakthrough” and consolidated China’s position as a world leader in fusion technology research, the Academy said. It would lay the foundation to begin building the country’s first experimental fusion power plant, it added.

Harvard University took the top spot for the seventh year in a row in The Times Higher Education’s World Reputation Rankings, published in June. With 42 institutions in the top 100, the United States continues to dominate. Tsinghua University is the highest ranking Chinese university, placing 14th, and is the second most prestigious Asia-Pacific university. The third is Peking University, which is 17thoverall. Both have gained four places compared with last year. Zhejiang University has performed well, rising 30 places to the joint 51-60 bracket. It overtook both Fudan University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, both found in the 81-90 band. Nanjing University has broken into the top 100 for the first time and is ranked 91-100. The University of Hong Kong features in the top 40 for the first time in five years after climbing six places to joint 39th. The Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology are in the 71-80 band.

China is developing a third prototype exascale computer, also known as a super supercomputer, and plans to launch it by June 2018. The Sunway exascale computer prototype is being developed by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC) and the National Supercomputing Center in Jinan, Shandong province. The NRCPC also led the team that developed the Sunway Taihu Light, crowned the world’s fastest computer at the International Supercomputing Conference in 2016 and 2017 in Frankfurt. An exascale computer is able to execute a quintillion calculations per second, about eight times faster than the Sunway Taihu Light. The increase in computational speed will advance research in such areas as climate change, space science, medicine and oceanology. Exascale supercomputers are expected to hit the market by 2020

China has become the first country in the world to establish photon entanglement at a distance of more than 1,200 kilometers, paving the way for ultra-secure, long-distance quantum communications. In July, Beijing and Vienna will try to conduct the world’s first cross-continental video call using Micius, the world’s first quantum communication satellite launched by China last year, but it would take more than a decade for such technologies to reach the public, scientists said. By beaming photons – individual particles of light – between Micius and two receiving ground stations – the Delingha station in Qinghai province and the Lijiang station in Yunnan province – Chinese scientists have shown that these photons could remain entangled despite the stations being more than 1,200 kilometers apart. This distance is 10 times greater than similar tests done on the ground, which are usually conducted using fiber optics or in open air, and are susceptible to interference. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which two or more entangled particles can affect each other simultaneously regardless of the distance between them. Scientists are trying to use it to encrypt and send messages, which would be tamper-proof, the China Daily reports.

Some 9.4 million students took this year’s national college entrance examination, or gaokao, last week. Some 3.72 million students are expected to enroll in an undergraduate degree program following the examination, an increase of nearly 10,000 compared to 2016. Henan province has the largest number of gaokao takers, a total of 863,000. This year marks the 40th anniversary since China reinstated the gaokao at the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). More than 200 million people passed the gaokao during the past 40 years. But some people are questioning whether a university education is still worth it. The average monthly salary for 2017’s university graduates will be CNY4,014, about CNY750 less than last year, according to employment portal Zhilian Zhaopin. In addition, only 26.7% of the 93,000 surveyed graduates had signed up for a job, and one-third of those surveyed had not received any job offer by the end of April, while 38.5% had accepted a job that was unrelated to their major. With high competition for jobs as well as low salaries, many are questioning whether China’s higher education system, whose admission is mostly decided by gaokao scores, is fit for the modern age, the Global Times reports.