China made a new generator that could power futuristic weapons

Researchers in China have made a lot of amazing discoveries in 2023 but few have been as worrying as the development of a new type of generator that could someday power a whole new class of futuristic and destructive weapons. Here's what we know about the alleged discovery.

Scientists in China claimed to have engineered a new type of generator that could turn hot gas moving at super-fast speeds into an electric current. If true, the technological break technology could be used to power the fiercest military-grade weapons the world has ever seen. 

Everything from military lasers and microwave weapons to rail guns and pulsed energy weapons could eventually be powered by the Chinese generator according to the South China Morning Post, which was paraphrasing comments from Assistant Researcher Zhang Xiaoyaun. 

Zhang was part of the group of scientific researchers from the Institute of Mechanics Under the Chinese Academy of Sciences that created the generator, and he explained in a statement with his colleagues that the creation had “numerous unique advantages.” 

“It has a large capacity and high efficiency. There is no need for intermediate energy storage components,” the statement read according to the South China Morning Post.

“The energy can be directly transferred to the load without a high-power switch. And the device can start up quickly,” the statement continued. But why would any of that matter?

Laser weapons require a vast amount of electricity to destroy a target from far away according to the South China Morning Post, and China is developing powerful microwave weapons that could use this technology to jam enemy satellites and planes. 

Both weapons would need megawatts and gigawatts of energy in order to actually work and that’s why the development of a generator that has the capacity to create a large amount of electricity is a groundbreaking scientific discovery. 

Researchers also noted in their statement that their generator doesn’t have any rotating parts, which is one of the many unique advantages that the group mentioned about their creation.

Popular Mechanics reported on the scientific breakthrough when it was announced and noted that the Chinese team used a controlled detonation to convert hot gas into plasma that was rich with ions that they converted into electricity. 

The research team was able to compress argon gas to an impressive fourteen times the speed of sound according to Popular Mechanics and produced upwards of 212 kilowatts of electrical current using .26 gallons of gas after passing through the generator. 

If you’re not a chemical engineer then those numbers might not mean anything to you but they are seriously impressive. “That’s enough power for a burst of energy unlike anything available now in a compact system,” wrote Popular Mechanic’s Tim Newcomb. 

The findings from the research group’s experiments were published in January 2023 in the ​​Chinese Journal of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and the study noted that the technology could have numerous civilian applications according to the South China Morning Post.  

Devices used for nuclear fusion energy could be one of the big technologies impacted by the new generator technology and it could also be used to generate strong SOS emergency signals. 

“If this technology finds an application in power generation, we may owe the hypersonic weapons a big ‘thank you’,” Zhang said according to the South China Morning Post. 

However, the generator does have some drawbacks and Interesting Engineer’s Baba Tamim pointed out that such a device noted that military users might have their doubts about the device because of a “detonation shockwave” from its control explosion. 

Tamim also noted that the generator could make a loud noise which would make the generator's location on the battlefield very obvious. But it should be said that loud noises have never stopped a military force from adopting new technologies.