Record set for hottest temperature on Earth
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.
The feat was accomplished in the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories.
They don't know how they did it.
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.
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.
-thanks msnbc and Fortean Times
2 comments:
You know Helskel, your blog is so unique. Sometimes I click and find humor, sometimes great art and poetry...
other times this really informative shit that only you and I and people that use the right and left halves of their brains simultaneously would find interesting....
I love this... just like the Kracken and the space thing.
you impress me all the time. I could intellectually fuck you.
thanks I neeeded tat.
er.. I needed that. Chess?
oh Gawd!
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