Lab Produces 3.6 Billion Degree Gas 594
starexplorer2001 writes "LiveScience is reporting how scientists at Sandia's Z laboratory have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit (2 billion kelvins). That's hotter than the interior of our sun, which is only 15 million degrees F. And they don't know how they did it. Do we want anything that hot on our planet?"
"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:4, Interesting)
How did they measure it ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Interesting)
How are they holding it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Do we want this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Who knew that such a profound quantum mechanical truth was concealed in this simple nursery rhyme? I bet in half the universes, the pigs were captured in the market and butchered for sausage, and it's only in the others where they return home safely.
Re:The article is really confusing.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do we want this? (Score:4, Interesting)
It also sounds like they don't think it's because of fusion. If the ions involved are Fe ions, then you wouldn't expect to get any energy from fusion from them.
Maybe the energy is coming from strong force interactions of some sort. It sounds like the temperatures were high enough that maybe there was some sort of quark-gluon plasma thing going on.
the laws of thermodynamics... (Score:3, Interesting)
The laws of the universe have finally come out of hiding and revealed to us that energy is an illusion and the abundance thereof is merely the lack of any continents at rest.
Just out of curiosity, what does that temperature imply about the velocity of the atoms in order to have that kind of average KE? is it fast enough to have relativistic significance?
Watch this space (Score:3, Interesting)
Gee, that's not big or anything. Makes sense to put that as an afterthought 4 paragraphs down...
Re:How did they measure it ? (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as the submitter's comments about whether we want such a hot thing on earth, it may be high temperature, but most experimental plasmas are extremely low density. Even if the plasma somehow ruptured its container and shot out around the lab, you'd never notice a change in temperature--especially since the plasma would only be around for something on the order of nanoseconds (going from memory here, might be less than that).
Why tungsten? (Score:3, Interesting)
Lithium not Iron (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Do we want this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Only one problem: Your universe only exists as long as you do.
Damned if you do.
Re:Duh, (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Interesting)
Ek=(mv^2)/2, where v=at^2 (Score:3, Interesting)
The paper [epsppd.epfl.ch] that proposes a model to explain the results says that the final plasma was pinched down to 3.6mm. If a glass tube containing fusable material (D+T ?) were at the center of the hohlraum, it would also get crushed from the inrushing plasma.
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, mass = energy, thus if the iron mass is being converted into energy then it isn't a perpetual motion machine. To solve this problem, we would have to standarize all units to eV (electron volts), then measure the input energy (mass of wires + power in eV), perform the experiment and measure the energy released (in eV), then subtract the two to determine the efficiency of the conversion process.
It's definately interesting and I can't wait see the math on how they achieved this. Also, I wonder if they attempted to detect gamma rays. If gamma rays were detected, that would make this process even more interesting (and dangerous) since some sort of nuclear transition would have occured. All they have to do now it figure out how to control this process and get it to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine and make electricity, then we are all set.
Re:The article is really confusing.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would counter that by pointing out that a gold-gold ion collision on RHIC involves at least ~1200 particles (3 quarks per nucleon and a mass of ~200 AMU(daltons) per ion). this is to say nothing of the millions of particles that are created at the collision point and then explode outward (the kinetic energy of the fast ions is converted to mass).
The thousands (not millions) of particles in RHIC do not constitute a plasma. They are individual particles. Properly, the record is for temperature of a plasma. I do not know the formal definition (if there IS one) of the cutoff point between many discrete particles and a proper plasma, and there may be a grey area between the two categories, but the RHIC collision results and the Z machine results are well on either side of such a threshold.
3rd life for the machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and Trekkies: the control room is, or was, has connections to the bridge of the Enterprise, including a places for Kirk et al with nameplates.
Re:The scary side of science (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard it said once that if we ever discover a signal from deep space that suggests an extraterrestrial origin, it will be utterly profound and life altering to be certain, but that NOT finding a signal is equally as profound. I'd go on to suggest that NOT finding a signal is a signal in itself, and a warning: There is something lurking in the actions of the physical universe, buried in it's forms and processes, that will when you hit it just right take you out. And that you run into it sometime shortly after you discover electricity.
Not to bring anybody down, you know.
Have a nice eternity,
theCat