a mad pic & an even madder story on yesterday's apod! as scientists continue thier research to develop a workable fusion reactor they have made some unexpected discoveries with thier experiments.

The most recent advance resulted in an output X-ray power of about 290 trillion watts -- for billionths of a second, about 80 times the entire world's output of electricity.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0603/zmachine_sandia.jpg
The plasma reached a temperature in excess of two billion Kelvin, making it arguably the hottest human made thing ever in the history of the Earth and, for a brief time, hotter than the interiors of stars. orrrjeh. :D thats HOT!

What I wanna know is, how in the hell did they even measure anything that hot? The tempurature was apparently hotter than the sun, wouldn't that vaporised just about anything known to man?.

Please explain!

last edited by Opec at 11:05:19 14/Mar/06

how the hell do they measure 2 billion kelvin ??

Thats impressive.

I assume they'd measure the heat signature of the emitted radiation.

With sufficient distance between themselves and it...

i imagine that as they are creating a plasma contained by a really strong electromagnetic field, they would measure the strength of the x-rays produced to determine the temperature... or something like that! :P~ it certainly wouldn't be a mercury thermometer heheh.

it should be obvious to any dimwitted individual who holds an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology

they stuck a thermometer up a nearby scientists arse

When was this test done, because that photo is most definetly not recent?

wheres doc oc?

Up your butt oc.

scuzzy: the z-machine is about 10years old... so the photo could have come from anytime within the last 10years. the latest test, where they achieved 2 billion degrees K, was done in feb.2006 & the news release was March 8, 2006. considering that the main mission for this project is military... we are lucky to have any pictures i rekn.

These guys are gonna blow up the planet!

thats pretty cool. WAIT NO IT ISNT ITS HOT LOLOLOLOL

forgive my noobness but isn't the only thing holding back fusion technology that they couldnt make the hydrogens hot enough to turn into heliums, so now they are closer to making sexycool power stations?

mummy

demon: ahh fair enough, Just wasnt sure if that photo was the same test as what they are now talking about :)

thats some psycho s***!
but cool nonetheless

last edited by thre3dee at 16:39:46 14/Mar/06

thats some psycho s***!

If psycho's s*** is as hot as that, no wonder he's having some medical problems

It'd be funnier if the containment field f***ed up and the damn thing ignited the atmosphere.

^ "Welcome, To The Black Mesa, Research Facility"

"Freeman, what are you doing no.. Nooo.. NARGHHHHhhh" * pzzfffttTT *

so yeah... whats the go with that picture? i don't understand it..

eagerly awaiting a meltdown and it burning into the earth

omfg! that's so pretty

eagerly awaiting a meltdown and it burning into the earth

spiderman will come to save the day

forgive my noobness but isn't the only thing holding back fusion technology that they couldnt make the hydrogens hot enough to turn into heliums

i heard fusion was do-able, but Cold Fusion (or fusion acheived in a safe, practical way) hadnt been acheived yet.


Then again I heard that in High School

It'd be funnier if the containment field f***ed up and the damn thing ignited the atmosphere.

yeh. makes you worry a bit hey. What if in some secret lab they 'accidently' created a tiny black hole...woooshka!.. we all go down the cosmic s-bend.

"forgive my noobness but isn't the only thing holding back fusion technology that they couldnt make the hydrogens hot enough to turn into heliums"

they have had fusion reactors work but too much energy needed to get up to temperature thats why u always hear about cold fusion.

i thought scientists did make a tiny black hole

Experiments with the Z Machine are helping to explain the physics of Solar flares, design more efficient nuclear fusion plants, test materials under extreme heat, and gather data for the computer modeling of nuclear explosions.

Cwazy

i thought scientists did make a tiny black hole

^ there's a witty retort in that line somewhere....

Many years of going to whitey's place have left a scar on demon.

hell's fire is hotter.

2 billion degrees K is still not hot enough for a good fusion reaction without the massive pressure of the sun. the sun & stars like it use this pressure to overcome the coulomb barrier by tunneling & can achieve effective nuclear fusion at a much lower temperature. 'cold fusion' is a theory that has never been verified with successful experiments afaik.

i dont think anyone is about to make any black holes anytime soon :D black holes need a lot of mass to form... more mass than we have in our entire solar system.

hell's fire is hotter.

how hot is it? & how do you measure it!?! :P

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

1) If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2) If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting Oh my God.

teehee.

If psycho's s*** is as hot as that, no wonder he's having some medical problems

hahaha only after a huge night on the curry, man I could cut through titanium after a big vindaloo.

:P

Nice quote demon i loled

Demon, isnt that quote actually from apaper a guy in the US submitted for his thesis in Physics...from memory the tutor gave him an 'A' for the method and theory he put forward. :P or is that another urban myth. :(

pornopete: :]

Psycho!: yeh that's the story i heard too... but a quick check with good ol' snopes revealed that the above quote is a variation of the original story.
still funny though :D