China has officially unveiled its hypergravity machine, CHIEF1900, a facility that has set a new world record by generating gravitational forces up to 100 times stronger than Earth’s gravity. Developed by Shanghai Electric Nuclear Power Group and approved in 2021, the facility was constructed 15 meters underground with a total investment of 2 billion yuan.

The CHIEF1900 project involved extensive collaboration among universities, research institutions, industrial players, and international partners. The machine was delivered to Zhejiang University on December 22 and will be used to simulate high-risk events such as dam failures and earthquakes under controlled laboratory conditions.

With a capacity of 1,900 g-ton, CHIEF1900 surpasses the previous global benchmark held by a centrifuge operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had a capacity of around 1,200 g-ton. The machine enables scientists to create hypergravity environments, where gravitational forces far exceed those naturally found on Earth.

Such conditions allow physical processes to be significantly accelerated, compressing phenomena that would normally take years or even thousands of years into much shorter experimental timeframes. Chen Yunmin, chief scientist of CHIEF and a professor at Zhejiang University, explained that hypergravity makes it possible to condense extremely long timescales into experiments that can be practically conducted in laboratories.

In dam safety testing, researchers can construct meter-scale models and subject them to forces equivalent to structures experiencing gravity 100 times stronger than Earth’s. This method provides more accurate insights into potential structural failures and supports the improvement of critical infrastructure design.

However, the development of CHIEF1900 also posed major technical challenges, particularly related to extreme heat generated by high rotational speeds. To address this issue, researchers implemented vacuum-based cooling systems, including vacuum pumps, glacier cooling technology, and air ventilation systems to maintain stable temperatures.

Beyond disaster simulation, CHIEF1900 is expected to drive fundamental scientific breakthroughs. Chen emphasized that the facility aims to create experimental environments spanning timescales from milliseconds to tens of thousands of years, and physical scales ranging from atoms to kilometers, under both normal and extreme conditions. This capability opens new opportunities to discover entirely new phenomena and develop groundbreaking scientific theories.