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OfflineSeussA
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Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin
    #5492556 - 04/08/06 11:32 AM (17 years, 9 months ago)

http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2006/physics-astron/hottest-z-output.html

Quote:

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. ? Sandia?s Z machine has produced plasmas that exceed temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin ? hotter than the interiors of stars.

The unexpectedly hot output, if its cause were understood and harnessed, could eventually mean that smaller, less costly nuclear fusion plants would produce the same amount of energy as larger plants.

The phenomena also may explain how astrophysical entities like solar flares maintain their extreme temperatures.

The very high radiation output also creates new experimental environments to help validate computer codes responsible for maintaining a reliable nuclear weapons stockpile safely and securely ? the principal mission of the Z facility.

?At first, we were disbelieving,? says Sandia project lead Chris Deeney. ?We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result and not an ?Ooops?!?

The results, recorded by spectrometers and confirmed by computer models created by John Apruzese and colleagues at Naval Research Laboratory, have held up over 14 months of additional tests.

A description of the achievement, as well as a possible explanation by Sandia consultant Malcolm Haines, well-known for his work in Z pinches at the Imperial College in London, appeared in the Feb. 24 Physical Review Letters.

Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory.

What happened and why?
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?

Second, and more unusually, high ion temperatures were sustained after the plasma had stagnated ? that is, after its ions had presumably lost motion and therefore energy and therefore heat ? as though yet again some unknown agent was providing an additional energy source to the ions.

Sandia?s Z machine normally works like this: 20 million amps of electricity pass through a small core of vertical tungsten wires finer than human hairs. The core is about the size of a spool of thread. The wires dissolve instantly into a cloud of charged particles called a plasma.

The plasma, caught in the grip of the very strong magnetic field accompanying the electrical current, is compressed to the thickness of a pencil lead. This happens very rapidly, at a velocity that would fly a plane from New York to San Francisco in several seconds.

At that point, the ions and electrons have nowhere further to go. Like a speeding car hitting a brick wall, they stop suddenly, releasing energy in the form of X-rays that reach temperatures of several million degrees ? the temperature of solar flares.

The new achievement ? temperatures of billions of degrees ? was obtained in part by substituting steel wires in cylindrical arrays 55 mm to 80 mm in diameter for the more typical tungsten wire arrays, approximately only 20 mm in diameter. The higher velocities achieved over these longer distances were part of the reason for the higher temperatures.

(The use of steel allowed for detailed spectroscopic measurements of these temperatures impossible to obtain with tungsten.)

Haines theorized that the rapid conversion of magnetic energy to a very high ion plasma temperature was achieved by unexpected instabilities at the point of ordinary stagnation: that is, the point at which ions and electrons should have been unable to travel further. The plasma should have collapsed, its internal energy radiated away. But for approximately 10 nanoseconds, some unknown energy was still pushing back against the magnetic field.

Haines? explanation theorizes that Z?s magnetic energies create microturbulences that increase the kinetic energies of ions caught in the field?s grip. Already hot, the extra jolt of kinetic energy then produces increased heat, as ions and their accompanying electrons release energy through friction-like viscous mixing even after they should have been exhausted.

High temperatures previously had been assumed to be produced entirely by the kinetic flight and intersection of ions and electrons, unaided by accompanying microturbulent fields.

Z is housed in a flat-roofed building about the size and shape of an aging high-school gymnasium.

This work has already prompted other studies at Sandia and at the University of Nevada at Reno.




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Offlinekotik
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Seuss]
    #5492707 - 04/08/06 12:07 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

now im much more ignorant on these things than i would like to be, but it almost sounds like the added, unexplained energy is from the potentials being limited, therefore giving the existing potentials.. more.. err.. potential.

:blazed:


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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: kotik]
    #5493330 - 04/08/06 02:59 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

It means something odd is going on, and it has the potential to be very big... as in changing the basic understanding of how things work big... but then again, it may be nothing.  Isn't science cool!  :smile:


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Invisiblegoobler
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Seuss]
    #5493347 - 04/08/06 03:07 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

and then it becomes too hot vaporizing us all


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OfflineHagbardCeline
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: goobler]
    #5494233 - 04/08/06 07:16 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

Vaporizing!?! OMG COOL Liek Toadie's Volcano ROFLZ EVBODY ON TEH WORLD HIGH!!!!!!


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OfflineYthanA
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Seuss]
    #5494270 - 04/08/06 07:30 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

I think this thread deserves an award for most interesting post to least intelligible response in record time.

This is cool as hell though (well, hot). Science is so interesting because every discovery just leads to new questions.


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OfflineHagbardCeline
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Ythan]
    #5494426 - 04/08/06 08:11 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

:grin:  Mine was the interesting part, right?

It will be interesting to see where that extra energy came from. 

Goodbye, sweet crude.  Hello...???


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I keep it real because I think it is important that a highly esteemed individual such as myself keep it real lest they experience the dreaded spontaneous non-existance of no longer keeping it real. - Hagbard Celine


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Invisiblegoobler
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Ythan]
    #5494572 - 04/08/06 08:54 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

whats least intelligent?


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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Seuss]
    #5496007 - 04/09/06 09:17 AM (17 years, 9 months ago)

I like to think its due to some insane fusion of natural elements :smile:

H2O --> Ne --> Ca + assload of energy

If a fly could've passed through there at that split second there would be no more lab :wink:
Two billion kelvin!

Something unexpected that yields more energy than it ought to have can be a reason for great rejoice.


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InvisibleTODAY
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Asante]
    #5496380 - 04/09/06 12:09 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

WC...will you please explain why a fly passing through the plasma chamber would result in destruction of the lab+ ?


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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: TODAY]
    #5496960 - 04/09/06 03:30 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

It's impossible in itself, so it was figure of speech but if you would heat a fly to 2.000.000.000'K fast enough you'd probably get a spurt of fusion energy which would be messy. It's twenty times the heat needed for unconfined (or rather self-confining) hydrogen isotope fusion.

I didnt look into it because it was an off the wall statement but at 2 billion K you might get hydrogen's protons inserting into the oxygens, carbons and nitrogens that make up a fly's body. Since this for a significant part would add to the energy already released you might get an energy release a lot bigger than the apparatus can take.

But this is all off the wall speculation. Bottom line is that if you shove any atoms hard enough they will either fuse or fall apart, producing excess energy. And 2 billion kelvin, well over 10 MeV if I'm guesstimating correctly, is one hell of a shove.

But: it can't happen. The day we can suddenly heat the mass of a fly over 10 MeV without a nuclear device would be a day to remember :smile:


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InvisibleTODAY
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Asante]
    #5497380 - 04/09/06 06:26 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

thanks WS.  that's really cool stuff, i guess i didn't think about it as hard as you did.

WS, you seem to know alot about chemistry and physics, what kind of education have you received on those topics or are you self-taught?  I believe it was you who helped theorize the psilocybin jungle extraction which I have yet to try...you so smart :crazy2:


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ca'rouse (k-rouz)
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To engage in boisterous, drunken merrymaking.


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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Asante]
    #5498882 - 04/10/06 04:56 AM (17 years, 9 months ago)

> producing excess energy.

Releasing excess binding energy. Nothing is created, only liberated. (Play on words in American English, produce can be confused for create, which would be incorrect in this context. Using release or liberate removes the ambiguity of energy being created.)

> Something unexpected that yields more energy than it ought to have can be a reason for great rejoice.

Indeed! Many of our best advances in science were discovered when the equations stopped balancing.


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OfflineKonnrade
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Seuss]
    #5499191 - 04/10/06 09:09 AM (17 years, 9 months ago)

I somehow find it entirely possible that when mankind makes the next revolutionary discovery in energy production, it will exceed our expectations and damage/destroy the facility it's being tested in.

I have no real justification for that, but I think it's possible, and the concept is amusing (if you conveniently avoid thinking about any potential loss of life)


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InvisibleTODAY
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: Konnrade]
    #5499707 - 04/10/06 12:25 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

So, according to this experiement it appears that we can...uhhh...liberate (seuss :wink: ) more energy from a reaction than we we initially thought.  Applying this kind of technology to fuel commercially viable powerplants will take a looooonnnngg time.


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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Sandia?s Z machine exceeds two billion degrees Kelvin [Re: TODAY]
    #5500113 - 04/10/06 02:45 PM (17 years, 9 months ago)

Can nobody get it correct?  :wink:

In your context we are apparently creating energy... much different than what W_S was speaking of.

*laugh*  Pass that this way, would ya?


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