From our other sites
The story
China’s magnetic levitation (maglev) railway has reportedly succeeded in a test run that reached 800 km/h in just 5.3 seconds from a standing start, then brought the train to a safe stop. On 5ch’s Science News+ board, discussion has centered on the G-forces passengers would experience, whether decelerating over such a short distance is safe, and how the technology differs from Japan’s superconducting maglev.
New World Record: China’s Maglev Train Hits 800 km/h Just 5 Seconds After Launch
The results of a magnetic levitation (maglev) railway test conducted in China are drawing the attention of engineers and security experts around the world.
The train accelerated rapidly to 800 km/h in a mere 5.3 seconds, then successfully came to a smooth stop.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The platypus-bill shape is to reduce the shock when entering tunnels. If there's no tunnel, the shape can be a lot simpler.
If a 70kg driver experiences a 2G load, the effective weight on their body doubles to 140kg (about 1,372 newtons).
It's actually 5 seconds, so double that again?
If a 70kg driver takes a 4.45G load (4.45 times Earth's gravity), the total force on their body is equivalent to about 311.5kg (3,054.8 newtons).
Kind of like having three 100kg (220 lb) guys sitting on top of you?
I have a vague feeling aircraft acceleration/deceleration G-forces are around 1.3G — compare that.
Crank that up just a bit more than double and it'd circle the globe and come back to hit you…
Last year's article said the National University of Defense Technology's system uses superconducting electromagnetic levitation and propulsion.
https://news.sciencenet.cn/htmlnews/2025/12/557701.shtm
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSrfkgjFB96/
This time it says the Hubei Donghu Laboratory's system uses electromagnetic levitation support and propulsion — I wonder how that differs?
Wasn't blackout from blood being unable to reach the brain supposed to start around 5G? Apparently there's individual variation too — some people can't even handle 3G — so with this kind of acceleration, a few passengers would probably pass out, and if anyone has a health condition or is frail, it could get dangerous.
Well, but even the original Shinkansen was designed so the driver can't stop in time to avoid an obstacle by sight alone.
Carrier catapults are only a few dozen meters long, though. Can this method even reach that kind of speed over such a short distance?
If you rode this right after eating, you'd throw it all up spectacularly lol
I mean, that's terrifying lol
Americans would probably love this kind of extreme stuff. There's a small chance the US and China team up on it.
Everyone would need seatbelts and no eating or drinking allowed. Phones, earbuds, all bags would have to be stowed.
The reason Japan's superconducting maglev runs underground is that buying up the land for the route isn't realistic.
Background and Key Points
Reading a report of an 800 km/h maglev test doesn’t require imagining a passenger train — the vehicle in question is a small-scale unmanned test sled, and China is running at least two parallel programs to get there. One, from the National University of Defense Technology, uses superconducting electrodynamic levitation, the same broad family of physics as Japan’s SCMaglev on the Chuo Shinkansen line (target speed 505 km/h, still under construction). The other, reportedly from Hubei’s Donghu Laboratory and the one behind this test, uses electromagnetic (normal-conducting) levitation — closer in principle to Germany’s abandoned Transrapid, which Shanghai’s commercial airport maglev already runs commercially at up to 430 km/h. Posters in the thread noted China appears to still be hedging between the two approaches rather than committing to one.
The thread’s actual disagreement wasn’t over whether 800 km/h is achievable — nobody contested the headline number — but over whether the acceleration and, more pointedly, the deceleration are survivable for a human occupant. Estimates in the thread ranged from roughly 2.3G to 4.5G depending on whether posters assumed a 5-second or 10-second run-up, with several noting that sustained G-loads above roughly 5G risk blackout from restricted blood flow to the brain, and that tolerance varies enough between individuals that some would struggle well below that.
What the thread didn’t address: this is a short test track, not a revenue line, so the same distance-limited physics that produce dramatic G-forces during a brief demo would not apply to a full-length passenger corridor, where acceleration could be stretched over minutes rather than seconds. The comparison to Japan’s blunt-nosed Shinkansen nose (for tunnel pressure waves) versus this vehicle’s plainer shape is also not evidence of Chinese superiority — it simply means this test, unlike Japan’s mountainous tunnel network, wasn’t run through tunnels.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread “[Railways] New World Record: China’s Maglev Train Hits 800 km/h Just 5 Seconds After Launch.”
Leave a Reply