Science Marches On

A scientific breakthrough?

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.

Superheated gas? We know how they did it -- someone in the lab probably had some spicy mexican food the night before. "Man, I shouldn't have eaten that burrito!"

The feat was accomplished in the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories.

. . .

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.

A very strong magnetic field compresses the plasma into the thickness of a pencil lead. This causes the plasma to release energy in the form of X-rays, but the X-rays are usually only several million degrees.

Sandia researchers still aren’t sure how the machine achieved the new record. Part of it is probably due to the replacement of the tungsten steel wires with slightly thicker steel wires, which allow the plasma ions to travel faster and thus achieve higher temperatures.

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.

Sandia consultant Malcolm Haines theorizes that some unknown energy source is involved, which is providing the machine with an extra jolt of energy just as the plasma ions are beginning to slow down.

Unknown energy source? Releasing more energy than was originally put in? Wacky stuff. Sounds alot like a nuclear fusion reaction. It recalls the "cold fusion" research in the late 1980's that was widly discredited. Who knows though, perhaps this is a break through that could lead to practical uses of fusion power. You know, like improving porno somehow, the same way every other technological advances has been used to make smut better.