HANGZHOU - China on Monday launched the world's largest centrifuge in terms of capacity, capable of generating 300 times Earth's gravity for a load up to 20 tonnes.

The machine, coded CHIEF1300, is one of the core components of the Centrifugal Hypergravity and Interdisciplinary Experiment Facility (CHIEF) currently under construction in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province.

It can be harnessed for frontier research spanning deep-ocean and deep-Earth resources extraction, disaster mitigation and prevention, underground waste disposal, and the synthesis of new materials.