Posted on 03/08/2006 2:50:47 PM PST by The_Victor
Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin, or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit.
This is hotter than the interior of our Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say.
They don't know how they did it.
The feat was accomplished in the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories.
"At first, we were disbelieving," said project leader Chris Deeney. "We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result."
Thermonuclear explosions are estimated to reach only tens to hundreds of millions of degrees Kelvin; other nuclear fusion experiments have achieved temperatures of about 500 million degrees Kelvin, said a spokesperson at the lab.
The achievement was detailed in the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.
The Z machine is the largest X-ray generator in the world. It’s designed to test materials under extreme temperatures and pressures. It works by releasing 20 million amps of electricity into a vertical array of very fine tungsten wires. The wires dissolve into a cloud of charged particles, a superheated gas called plasma.
A very strong magnetic field compresses the plasma into the thickness of a pencil lead. This causes the plasma to release energy in the form of X-rays, but the X-rays are usually only several million degrees.
Sandia researchers still aren’t sure how the machine achieved the new record. Part of it is probably due to the replacement of the tungsten steel wires with slightly thicker steel wires, which allow the plasma ions to travel faster and thus achieve higher temperatures.
One thing that puzzles scientists is that the high temperature was achieved after the plasma’s ions should have been losing energy and cooling. Also, when the high temperature was achieved, the Z machine was releasing more energy than was originally put in, something that usually occurs only in nuclear reactions.
Sandia consultant Malcolm Haines theorizes that some unknown energy source is involved, which is providing the machine with an extra jolt of energy just as the plasma ions are beginning to slow down.
That was the quote that immediately caught my eye. If you get more out than you put in, let's harness this new source of energy immediately.
and how much did this cost us taxpayers?
Thus voiding the manufacturer's warranty.
almost as hot as when Democrats open their yappers.
How did it not completely incinerate the device that produced it?
Its fusion! From deuterium. Wow.
Here there be dragons.
Good explanation at post 20
In other words, it was a "fun" question!!!
:)
That's what I'm wondering as well.
The phenomenon may be due to some sort of secondary fission of the heated material. Temperatures that high could very plausibly get into the range of where any kind of material would come apart on an atomic level.
I find the method used to determine the temperature to be just as fascinating as the phenomenon itself.
yeah yeah yeah, but how fast will it cook my hot dogs?
The average stun gun produces 500,000 volts but it won't kill ya because of low amps, but do not stick your finger in a light socket.Extreme High heat very low quantity.
There's Texas chili that's hotter than that.
Send this to the President of Iran.
Moe: "That baby'll flash fry a buffalo in five seconds."
Homer: "Awwwww, but I want it noooow."
If we were told, we might set a new high-temperature record ourselves. ;-)
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