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Lab Produces 3.6 Billion Degree Gas

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hotter-than-the-sun dept.

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?"

27 of 594 comments (clear)

  1. Summary is wrong yet again by Kasracer · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to the summary, the Sun's interior is 15 million degrees Fahrenheit. According to the article, it's 15 million degrees Kelvin which makes the Sun's interior actually 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.

    1. Re:Summary is wrong yet again by SeeMyNuts! · · Score: 5, Funny


      Nice, but what all Slashdotters really want to know is the temperature of Natalie Portman's grits!

    2. Re:Summary is wrong yet again by gbobeck · · Score: 5, Funny
      ...which makes the Sun's interior actually 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.


      Yes, but it isn't that bad because its a dry heat.
      --
      Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
    3. Re:Summary is wrong yet again by dgatwood · · 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.

      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). 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.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    4. Re:Summary is wrong yet again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wow, I thought that joke had died out ages ago. Oh well...
      In Soviet Russia, Natalie Portman heats YOUR grits!

  2. Big deal... by SirBruce · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... I got 3.6 Billion Degree Gas just by eating at Taco Bell last week.

    Bruce

  3. How did they measure it ? by distributed · · Score: 5, Interesting

    and I RTFA.

    --
    [all generalizations are untrue except this one]
    1. Re:How did they measure it ? by lobsterGun · · Score: 5, Informative

      All things glow when they heat up, and they do so in a predictable manner.

      They may have been able to measure the wavelength of the electromagnetic energy coming off of the gas.

      This explains it better than I ever could.

    2. Re:How did they measure it ? by nleaf · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The way that the temperatures of things like plasmas are measured is to measure the radiation emitted by them as they cool. The way a spectrometer works is by measuring the properties of radiation, wavelength for instance, and use whatever various physical laws to work out the temperature of the plasma based on that measurement. The spectrometer is never really in the plasma like a thermometer in water.

      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).

    3. Re:How did they measure it ? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 5, Funny

      "How did they measure it ?"

      They used Recording Industry math.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  4. The article is really confusing.... by technoextreme · · Score: 5, Informative

    It says that the record was set for the hottest temperature ever on earth. Unfortunately, the value they list is not the highest value I can obtain for a really hot temperture. The hottest temperature I found occurs at RHIC and that is a trillion degress kelvin not fifteen million. http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/heavy_ion.htm Could it be a record temperture for a certain type of reaction? Also to answer the question about is this safe. Yes it's safe. The temperatures only occur for such a small tiny tiny tiny fraction of a second that it really doesn't affect anything.

    --
    Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
    1. Re:The article is really confusing.... by Manchot · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, in particle accelerators like the RHIC, temperature doesn't really have a lot of meaning. Temperature is a statistical quantity, and depends on the presence of many particles to be adequately defined. In colliders, only a couple particles are present, which happen to be accelerated to high velocities (and therefore high "temperatures"). However, the article seems to imply that many particles were involved in the experiment.

    2. Re:The article is really confusing.... by deglr6328 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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). To speak of the 2 TeraKelvin temperature of a quark-gluon plasma of a heavy ion collision makes just as much sense as to talk about the 3 GigaKelvin temp. of a small amount of iron plasma in the Z machine.

      --
      - "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
  5. Do we want this? by rah1420 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let's see. The experiment released more energy than it expended....

    Let me think a minute.

    Yes.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
    1. Re:Do we want this? by SEWilco · · Score: 5, Funny
      Let's see. The experiment released more energy than it expended....
      Too bad that half the time it destroys the planet. Fortunately we're always in the quantum universe which does not get destroyed. Well, this "we" is.
  6. To quote Paris Hilton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's hot

  7. Getting out of hand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I don't care what anyone says, these new pentiums just plain run too warm.

  8. Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" by mooingyak · · Score: 5, Funny

    Meaning that the temperature increase was not caused by the energy source they know about, so something else provided the energy necessary for a temperature increase. We might choose to refer to this as an unknown energy source.

    --
    William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
  9. Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" by Smidge204 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, from what I know of conventional thermodynamics... some quantity of mass must have been converted to energy.

    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=

  10. Re:How are they holding it? by brian0918 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The container that holds the experiment is called a holhraum, just a cylindrical metal thingy. In the middle, wires are vertically strung around in a circle (see this pic). When you pass a current through the wires, they want to move towards eachother (Ampere's law). Since the situation is symmetrical, they all move towards the center, and the intense current, motion, and collision, turn the wires into a hot plasma, that doesn't stick around for long. The whole thing is over in well under a second, and the container holding the plasma is destroyed.

  11. Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately, an awful lot of science ends with...

    "So, what exactly did you do before the lab exploded?"

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  12. 3.6 billion!? by xeon4life · · Score: 5, Funny

    None of you have any idea what's going on! What really happened is these scientists have stumbled upon a gateway to hell, and this abnormally high temperature eminating from it is just the beginning of what can come out! We need to stop the scientists NOW before it's too late!

    --
    Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
  13. Here's Sandia's write-up by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Informative

    Rather than reading a digest from a science news site (not that it's a bad writeup) here is the press release from Sandia themselves.

    Personally, I think the picture of the Z-machine is one of the coolest looking things I've seen. =)

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  14. Bush: U.S. on Verge of Energy Breakthrough by PowerEdge · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bush: U.S. on Verge of Energy Breakthrough

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-56 35046,00.html

  15. Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" by rtaylor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unfortunately, an awful lot of science ends with...

    "So, what exactly did you do before the lab exploded?"
    Isn't that usually when the military steps in with funding?

    --
    Rod Taylor
  16. Re:"Some unknown energy source is involved" by JudgeFurious · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here in Texas it usually starts with "Hey, hold my beer for a second"

    --
    Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
  17. Asimov had the right idea here... by Malor · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka, but rather 'Hmm, that's funny...'"

    -- Isaac Asimov

    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.