Posted on 08/15/2012 7:00:33 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Scientists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider say they just temporarily created the hottest man-made temperature by colliding two lead ions.
According to a source working on the project, the collision sprung loose a plasma "soup" of sub-atomic gluons and quarks at an estimated temperature of 5.5-trillion-degrees Celsius. We won't know just how hot the plasma was for at least a few weeks because the measurements are very delicate and have to be converted to degrees. The consensus seems to be that it will shatter the previous record, which was about 4 trillion degrees.
The craziest thing is that this might not even be the hottest temperature ever. Scientists at Brookhaven Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) are still trying to figure out how hot a similar plasma they created last month is.
So let's review: two sub-atomic particle labs on opposite sides of the Atlantic both potentially broke a record for an obscenely hot temperature. It's a temperature so hot and so temporary, that they can't even measure it in degrees. No matter who holds the record, people win because science is awesome. [Nature and RHIC]
fyi
Now we can blame global warming on RHIC.
They call this a “quark-gluon plasma”, which I love to say ... “quark-gluon plasma”, that is. I remember years ago they used to talk about the “temperature of hell” as being the theoretically maximum possible temperature, because any attempt to make it hotter would just cause more particles to be created, which subtracts from the kinetic energy, thus cooling it.
The quark-gluon plasma is in this realm. They make graphs of the “chemical potential” ( a misnomer surely! ) of the quarks and gluons, which is a quantitative way of dealing with the “maximum temperature” idea.
It’s definitely a mind-blow, as we used to say.
Yeah, that conversion to degrees is hard!
Wow that seems really important in the big scheme of life. I think I’ll put a worm on my tongue and wait with baited breath until they report the temperature reached.
You say that sarcastically ( I can tell by the 'sound' of your voice).
Convert 5.2 times 3 to the 100th power in calories, into degrees Celsius (heat).
As the velocity approaches c, the relativistic mass of each particle approaches infinity:
Which means the energy (and temperature) approach infinity. There is no such thing as a maximum theoretical temperature.
Article was obviously written by someone who has never had one of these:
or these:
they haven't had REAL hot coffee since the lawsuit...
...love the napalm filling...
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