Something you might not want to put your hand in..

[five_distinct]

Don't know if this is a repost, I really hope it isn't..I did a quick search and at first glance I appear to be safe:

http://www.livescience.com/technology/060308_sandia_z.html


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.

...


Exciting news, plus they were getting more power out than in!

Edit: Here's another article, this one puts a number on the energy difference.
http://www.physorg.com/news11538.html


...
Z’s energies in these experiments raised several questions.

First, the radiated x-ray output was as much as four times the expected kinetic energy input.

Ordinarily, in non-nuclear reactions, output energies are less — not greater — than the total input energies. More energy had to be getting in to balance the books, but from where could it come?
...

[Nicolas]

I would have LOVED to see:

Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin (1,999,726.85 degrees Celsius)..

Like we used to see when they started with converting prices to € at the time it was very close to the dollar. :D

btw "degrees Kelvin" is wrong. The unit is "Kelvin".

Anyway, that's a very very hot gas by all means! And possibly a very interesting discovery.

[five_distinct]

Oh now you're just nitpicking!

[Nicolas]

A magazine called "LiveScience" should have its units correct :).


Units are very important; without units it could have been 2 billion assignments, and we wouldn't want to have those, right?

Aaaaaaaah, High School :D

[five_distinct]

They were just so excited that they plum forgot ;)

[Nicolas]

Well, I can understand that, their machine just went berserk without any good explanation, thereby breaking the temperature record and getting more energy out than in (mind that this is physically possible as the energy contained in the material is not counted in the "energy in"). I would forget some scientific details in such a situation :).

[Swift]

Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin (1,999,726.85 degrees Celsius).

I agree about the units, it is Kelvin.
I also wonder about 9 significant digits in their temperature measurments - are they really that good?

Very interesting piece of work though - are they close to self-sustaining fusion?

[Nicolas]

That 1,999,726.85 °C was just my joke, they did not claim it was this accurate. They just said "over 2 billion Kelvin". My joke conversion was a serious violation of significant digits/transfer of accurracy. But so was the phenomenon I was laughing at.

(things like "...costs over 3 million dollars (2.9878 million €)" in the newspapers)

High temperature measurements are quite inaccurate, because you need to get creative with what thermometer to use there.

[Swift]

:doh:
Sorry, I missed that it was your joke. Back in my teaching assistant days I always pushed the point of significant digits on my students.

I am very familiar with techniques for measuring 1000 to 2000 K; I don't know how you measure 2 x 10^7 K - I would guess an optical pyrometer or something similar, but where is the peak in that black body curve?

[Nicolas]

I don't know how it is done exactly. I assume it can only be done by remote sensing methods at those temperatures :).

Oh yes significant digits. Very important when presenting measurement results. But when you're calculating with those resulting, it sometimes becomes quite dubious exactly how many significant digits are left in a calculation result IMO (when the calculation's aren't too straightforward).

[Dr Nigel]

It is indeed a very high temp. They may not need to measure the peak of the black-body curve (I would expect it to be in X-rays at that temperature) - all they would need is a handful of measurements in visible / UV to be able to work out the temperature (to about 1 sig fig). I believe this technique is used to measure the surface temperature of hot stars (the peak of the curve tends to be rather broad and difficult to pinpoint exactly, whereas the ratio of the emission at two specific wavelengths can give a more accurate measure).

On the nuclear reactions thing - if it sounds too good to be true, it most probably is.

[five_distinct]

Unless it's just one of those things, like the slice of bread, that was stumbled upon so accidentaly that it revolutionizes meals everywhere.

[Nicolas]

If they want to revolutionize meals with this, they must take care not to end up like the hot McDonalds coffee :D.

[five_distinct]

Ah McDonald's coffee, the only thing hotter than a 2-billion kelvin stream of ionized steel.