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

 

Amazing stuff...almost makes me want to switch to a physics major or something. :peace:

 

Edit: Wow, I'm tired. I had to edit this twice because I couldn't make a sentence.

Is it getting hot in here or is it just me :peace:

 

That's amazing.

I asked Spock about this. He said, "very interestink."

 

I have a tinge of doubt. But if real, truly very interesting. As it seems to me they are on way to something very big. Hopefully that becomes more useful then dangerous, like Nuclear chain reactions. It made me wonder if it may be close to such an unstable chain reaction as to turn this planet into a sun or blackhole. :peace:

such an unstable chain reaction as to turn this planet into a sun or blackhole.

lolp ur funny.

It looks like the possiblity of a new form of energy, or the begining of a new weapon that would end existance on earth. :peace:

get a bit of a sun burn from that i think

My friends and I were just discussing this. They plan on using it to try and initiate fusion, though I think this machine has been around for a long time.

I am getting 404 for that link.

But if You're talking about fusion power, it's been around for some time.

how did they manage to contain it without melting the container?

...hmmm... i read it now...

If that made it to PhysicalReviewLetters, then it's worth noting.

 

Bojangles: Temperature is nothing more than average kinetic energy of a statistic set of particles divided by Boltzman's constant. Contatining charged particles (plasma) is quite easy with magnetic fields (recall the Lorentz force).

 

DEFCON: i don't see how they could use it to initiate fusion. The two require totally different preparations. It's not all about the pressure and temperature.

I hope they use that as a new form of heating. Otherwise that kind of technology, although very cool, but very scary at the same time.

 

I'm kind of curious though. Does the magnetic field contain the heat thats generated. If so how does it do it, or what does contain the heat from escaping?

It wont load for me.

 

Gator said "The beginning of a new weapon that would end existence on earth"

yet there are already nuclear weapons all over the place that can do just that.

I'm kind of curious though. Does the magnetic field contain the heat thats generated. If so how does it do it, or what does contain the heat from escaping?

The article said, that energy in the form of X-Rays had a 'temperature' (vide Planck's old Quantum Theory) of a few hundreds of million degrees. So i gathered, that the rest was kinetic energy of particles. Thats how.

Miyamoto I have no idea what "vide planck's old quantum theory" is or was. lol... That stuff is way way over me head.

vide means more or less 'look at'.

 

Planck's old quantum theory enables us to give temperature signature to a radiation. It all comes from radiation of pure black material. Pure black material that has a set temperature, will radiate at specific range of wavelengths (which are directly connected to photon energy by planck's constant). Just find the maximum.

 

Also remember - there is no 'heat'.

It wont load for me.

 

Gator said "The beginning of a new weapon that would end existence on earth"

 

yet there are already nuclear weapons all over the place that can do just that.

The temperatures reached by this experiment, albeit a mistake to come upon these extremely high temps, are, if my math is correct, some hundred times more than a thermonuclear explosion.

 

The article is quoted as saying...

 

"Thermonuclear explosions are estimated to reach only tens to hundreds of millions of degrees Kelvin; other nuclear fusion experiments have achieved temperatures of about 500 million degrees Kelvin, said a spokesperson at the lab."

 

That means that, basically, this is, at the very least (when experiments pushed their tests to reach higher temperatures), x4 the temperature of a thermonuclear explosion.

 

The temps reached here, according to this article, are hotter than the very core of our sun......and that's hot!

 

For you science addicts out there, you may recall that there is no such thing as a maximum heat...only a maximum (or minimum, I suppose I should say) freezing point, the so-called "absolute zero" at which nothing exists any longer.

 

I don't think we've heard the last of this acheivement.....

While i can concur, that there can be no maximum 'heat', i also have to say, that in fact there is no 'absolute zero'. Sure, putting zero in helps simplify very hard equations, but that is just mathematical action. There can be nothing that reaches this temperature. Sure, one might think, that one will have absolute zero in place, where there is no matter or radiation. But then (taking more classical aproach) we would never know about it, becouse to measure something we have to 'see' it, and thus we will have something where there was nothing and that won't be absolute zero (vide operators). Or, taking quantum mechanical aproach, temperature has no definition. There are no operators that have temperature as their eigenvalue. It's a statistical creation.

Very interesting article. I am becoming interested in science more and more.

 

As gator stated, I do as well think this will 'leak' out to the black market and will be used as a weapon in the near future.

 

Time will tell.

well i think tomorrow afternoon at 3:12pm the sun will expand into a red giant, absorbing all planets out to jupiter, destroying all mankind in the process, so it wont matter if any makes a weapon out of it

well i think tomorrow afternoon at 3:12pm the sun will expand into a red giant, absorbing all planets out to jupiter,

Actually the red giant will only expand as far as current Mecrury orbit :/

Ooohhh, owned by Musashi! xD

 

I do agree, though, Myamoto, absolute zero is statiscally valid, but otherwise is not.

Ok, even though they don't say (I don't think), I would figure they have some tool to figure out the temperature. What kind of leads me astray is that they didn't seem to confident in their measurement. They stumble onto a method of creating something at this temperature and then say that it is this temperature, but don't know how. While I am sure it isn't uncommon to stumble onto new discoveries, how sure are they that they aren't wrong? What if the method they use to estimate the temperature is flawed after a certian amount? They wouldn't know it because nothing has been this high before.

 

This could be a fairly good step in science. If we are able to produce this type of reaction in a controlled enviroment, what are the possiablities in real world applications?

You are right. Luker3. I suppose the tempoerature measured is with low confidence. But i suppose it was good enough for the article to be placed in a prestigeous magazine.

 

But i can go a little further than that. The temperature is the most complicated thing to measure. There are 50+ measuring methods, each for a different range of temperatures. Sometimes one method holds only for a few degrees (or even less - few tenths or hundreths of a degree), when it is taken by another method. The lower the temperature, the worse it gets.

Your saying that the lower the temperature, the harder it is to measure? Is that because the molecules aren't moving as fast, and it can be hard to get an accurate reading of the temperature?

The dificulty is to get an accurate measurement. For that, one needs a reference. And there is NO ideal reference for temperature measurement. Each little range of temperatures has it's own reference, that's why it's so hard.