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?"
Summary is wrong yet again (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:5, Funny)
Nice, but what all Slashdotters really want to know is the temperature of Natalie Portman's grits!
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:5, Funny)
You're obviously new here.
Temperature = Hot
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, Natalie Portman heats YOUR grits!
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:5, Funny)
It cooled during handling (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but it isn't that bad because its a dry heat.
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:4, Informative)
-l
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:5, Informative)
Degrees Kelvin is not a unit.
Uh, as long as we're being pedantic, yes, it is. It's just an obsolete unit. It's no less a unit than rods, chains, fathoms, cubits, or furlongs per fortnight [wikipedia.org].
More specifically, degrees Kelvin was replaced by "Kelvins" by decree of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (who specify the SI measurement system) back in 1967 in the 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures (1 [colostate.edu]). This does not mean that it suddenly ceases to be a unit, however deprecated a unit it might be.
On a side note, they decreed in 1948 that degrees Centigrade should be replaced by Celsius degrees. The fact that I, born in 1976, still originally learned it as Centigrade should give some indication about how slowly language changes.
The real problem is that every measure of temperature that people use in their daily lives is measured in degrees. People are used to saying "degrees Celsius" or "degrees Fahrenheit". I understand the desire to have all the SI units not be prefixed by such a term, but it does serve an important purpose in making temperature fairly easily distinguished from other numbers in common language use, and thus is unlikely to fade away easily. I would not be surprised if a large percentage of non-scientists were still calling it "degrees Kelvin" fifty years from now....
1. Source: U.S. Metric Association.
Re:Ummm... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Summary is wrong yet again (Score:5, Informative)
Re:and yet wrong again.. (Score:5, Funny)
There is a ginormous difference in 15M degrees F and 15M Kelvin.
Both are too hot for me to grasp. Even with hot pads.
Re:and yet wrong again.. (Score:4, Funny)
Big deal... (Score:5, Funny)
Bruce
"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Funny)
RAmen!
"Unknown Energy Source" I think not. (Score:5, Funny)
I can explain it entirely with three words.
"Flying Spaghetti Monster"
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:5, Insightful)
The real catch is thus: "...the high temperature was achieved after the plasma's ions should have been losing energy and cooling."
I find this is exciting! Some of the best science starts with the words "Gee, that's funny..."
=Smidge=
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:5, Insightful)
"So, what exactly did you do before the lab exploded?"
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:5, Insightful)
"So, what exactly did you do before the lab exploded?"
Isn't that usually when the military steps in with funding?
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:4, Funny)
I need to stop playing that damn game.
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Funny)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:5, Funny)
The most memorable starts with "Hey, watch this!"
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:4, Insightful)
wrong... All good science starts with:
WTF..
High-res image of Z machine (and press release) (Score:4, Informative)
2400x1586 JPEG of Z [sandia.gov]
Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, given these are high-energy physycists working at Sandia National Labs [sandia.gov], and they've been able to consistenly replicate this, I don't think we're talking about any perpetual-motion quackery here.
It's safe to assume that when they say it generated more energy than input to the system, they're right. They just need to try and figure out the details now.
Bush: U.S. on Verge of Energy Breakthrough (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-5
THIS IS TOTAL NONSENSE (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not fusion. (Score:4, Insightful)
People are simply confusing the fusion research that is done with Z-machine with what is going on here. The increase in temperature has already been explained by a model that has been shown to fit the data, and does not involve anything in the way of fusion.
How did they measure it ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How did they measure it ? (Score:5, Informative)
They may have been able to measure the wavelength of the electromagnetic energy coming off of the gas.
This [wikipedia.org] explains it better than I ever could.
Re:How did they measure it ? (Score:5, Informative)
I read this article on PhysOrg.com http://www.physorg.com/news11538.html [physorg.com] (yes I'm to lazy to HTML'ize that link)
From the PhysOrg article: "The results, recorded by spectrometers and confirmed by computer models created by John Apruzese and colleagues at Naval Research Laboratory, have held up over 14 months of additional tests. "
What I don't understand is how these spectrometers even worked at these tempearatures, I would expect most things to go kaput at these temperatures.
Re:How did they measure it ? (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:How did they measure it ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How did they measure it ? (Score:5, Funny)
They used Recording Industry math.
The article is really confusing.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The article is really confusing.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The article is really confusing.... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:The article is really confusing.... (Score:3, Informative)
Do we want this? (Score:5, Funny)
Let me think a minute.
Yes.
Re:Do we want this? (Score:5, Funny)
(energy out energy in) != perpetual motion (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, this is not a recipe for perpetual motion. For a new energy source, maybe, but not perpetual motion.
Re:(energy out energy in) != perpetual motion (Score:4, Insightful)
You're adding energy in the form of the high potential energy found in the compounds in wood (cellulose is a good example); meanwhile, excess energy is being continuously added in the even higher-potential of a common diatom: oxygen.
Of course, you have to add energy to liberate the atoms in the first place, that being a match and the flame off your starter fluid and kindling.
Hey, campfires are complex.
Re:(energy out energy in) != perpetual motion (Score:4, Insightful)
Your claiming that somehow the basic principles of E=MC^2 break down when it comes to a specific type of reaction?
Christ, man. He didn't say relativistic principles break down, he said they're superfluous. It's overkill for the example. You're liberating energy in the form of chemical bonds, so the loss of mass as energy is pretty much negligible in chemical reactions, 'cause the mass-energy of the reactants utterly overwhelms the amount of energy released. Mass is, for all practical purposes, conserved.
I think chemists and physicists understood combustion pretty well before Einstein came along. There was this guy, you know, Lavoisier, he had a few things to say about stuff sticking around.
But come the hell on. If you have a graduate degree in physics you know this. You're just being a jerk to save some face.
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.
Re:Do we want this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Do we want this? (Score:5, Funny)
These are possibilities, but you should consider that the tachyon phase tranducers might have cross-coupled with the warp core.
Re:Do we want this? (Score:3, Informative)
Once it's in a plasma, all bets are off. However, there's a nifty effect that could be at work here. IN the presence of very strong (5gigagauss or better) magnetic fields, the electron energy levels in the plasma become
Re:Do we want this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Do we want this? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do we want this? (Score:5, Funny)
All other "we" are hereby instructed to file formal complaints before further experiments take place. Complaints will be reviewed and taken into consideration after the experiments have been completed.
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:Do we want this? (Score:3, Funny)
Speaking from a quantum mechanical viewpoint, the pigs are both slaughtered for breakfast sausage and they make it home safely. Just make damned sure you don't observe them, though, because then (statistically speaking) you'd kill them half the time. Now, pard
To quote Paris Hilton (Score:5, Funny)
The long-awaited invention of magic! (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like magic to me!
Re:The long-awaited invention of magic! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The long-awaited invention of magic! (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC, Fe is that magical break-even point where the energy it takes to fuse it is about even with the energy produced by the fusion (which is why blue supergiant stars go BOOM when they reach this stage). Beyond Fe, you're better off with fission I believe.
higher than fusion temperatures (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy#Power_p lant_design [wikipedia.org]
Also plasma is not a gas. The article points this out, but the title gets it mixed up. It is a 4th phase of matter associated with high conductivity and separation of ionic components
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics) [wikipedia.org]
I worked in this department for 3 summers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I worked in this department for 3 summers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I worked in this department for 3 summers (Score:3, Funny)
Getting out of hand (Score:5, Funny)
Software bug... (Score:3, Funny)
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?
3.6 billion!? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, it sounds like ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:3.6 billion!? (Score:5, Funny)
Here's Sandia's write-up (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I think the picture of the Z-machine [sandia.gov] is one of the coolest looking things I've seen. =)
why farenheit??? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not like it's a weather report or anything! Keep it scientific!
Research paper abstract (Score:5, Informative)
Ion Viscous Heating in a Magnetohydrodynamically Unstable Z Pinch at Over 2×109 Kelvin [aip.org]
Pulsed power driven metallic wire-array Z pinches are the most powerful and efficient laboratory x-ray sources. Furthermore, under certain conditions the soft x-ray energy radiated in a 5 ns pulse at stagnation can exceed the estimated kinetic energy of the radial implosion phase by a factor of 3 to 4. A theoretical model is developed here to explain this, allowing the rapid conversion of magnetic energy to a very high ion temperature plasma through the generation of fine scale, fast-growing m=0 interchange MHD instabilities at stagnation. These saturate nonlinearly and provide associated ion viscous heating. Next the ion energy is transferred by equipartition to the electrons and thus to soft x-ray radiation. Recent time-resolved iron spectra at Sandia confirm an ion temperature Ti of over 200 keV (2×109 degrees), as predicted by theory. These are believed to be record temperatures for a magnetically confined plasma.
Also, there's a press release [sandia.gov] from Sandia National Labs.
So, Mr. Bond ... (Score:5, Funny)
... and again (Score:3, Informative)
Kelvins would be the correct term.
Watch this space (Score:3, Interesting)
Gee, that's not big or anything. Makes sense to put that as an afterthought 4 paragraphs down...
Why tungsten? (Score:3, Interesting)
Asimov had the right idea here... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is potentially a very, very big deal. The temperature is NOT the most important thing... that's the headline for dummies.
The important part: they're getting out more energy than they're putting in, and they don't understand why.
Lithium not Iron (Score:3, Interesting)
There's no energy production here, move along... (Score:5, Informative)
What the article says, and it's easy to be confused by this, is that the observed energy was greater than the kinetic energy of the implosion. However, one has to realize that the kinetic energy isn't the only significant source of energy in the system. There is also the energy in the magnetic field. The article goes on to elucidate a mechanism by which magnetic field energy is converted to thermal energy ions, which is then transferred to electrons to produce soft X-Rays.
Thus, the bottom line here is, unfortunately, that what happened in this experiment was that one component of the total energy input, magnetic energy, which normally is not converted into heat, was converted into heat by a new mechanism. This is what the authors meant by a new energy source. In other words:
NO FUSION.
Okay, time to move along folks, nothing to see here other than some really really really really hot plasma, which probably don't have the density to achieve sustained fusion...yet. =)
Re:There's no energy production here, move along.. (Score:3, Informative)
The scary side of science (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we want anything that hot on our planet?"
Indeed. I love science, and in general I have tremendous faith in most scientists and physiscists. But science has progressed to a state where we are starting to venture into areas where there are huge swaths of unknowns, in physics, genetics, and nanotechnology.
I mean, this quote sums it up for me......some unknown energy source is involved.... Wow, so basically, they did this experiment, which resulted in a breaking of one of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, and resulted in a gas billions of degrees higher than expected?
GMO crops, artifical black holes, supercolliding particles ( of which sometimes we don't even know what will happen until we do it)... I mean, I am beginning to think man is not going to be obliterated through war, or disease, or a nuclear holocost, but just in an instant flash of some experiment gone wrong.
We need to be very careful, the forces we are starting to toy with are both potent and dangerous, as well as increasingly misunderstood.
Z machine (Score:4, Informative)
However, I must admit it does make cool pictures. The bright lines you see on most pictures are supposedly spare charge arcing across the giant pool in which they have to keep the whole thing submerged.
Does Gordon Freeman work there? (Score:4, Funny)
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:How are they holding it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fart jokes aside... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:not so sure... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Duh, (Score:3, Insightful)
"At first, we were disbelieving," said project leader Chris Deeney. "We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result."
Obviously no need for divine relevation there then.
As for the thermometer, well duh, obviousky they're measuring the temperature (i.e. energy) of radiation.
Re:Duh, (Score:4, Insightful)
So you create a hypothesis and design an experiment to test it out. You expect the results to be A if it works, and B if it doesn't work. But funnily enough, your result was C. Does this suddenly cast doubt on science and the scientific method in general? No. It just means that the original hypothesis is incorrect and nature doesn't work as expected. Now you just have to scratch your head and figure out how the hell "C" happens.
Sounds to me like this story is a bunch of hogwash, now that I think of it. How would you even measure the temperature in order to come to the conclusion that it was 3.6 billion degrees? There's not a thermometer on the planet that can measure something that hot.
I find it disturbing that something is "hogwash" just because you don't understand it. Perhaps if you educated yourself a little more on the subject then you'd understand how it's done.