NEWS: Z-Machine produced up to 3.6 billion degrees at Sandia National Laboratories.

Looks like their are a few people asking what happens if things like this go wrong. I too am concerned, man cant really be trusted with things of this power.

Lets say this is used as some sort of power source like nuclear, what if we get another desaster? 3.6 billion degrees is truly hot. Letting that kind of tempatures loose is going to vaporise alot of things.

This kind of tech is probably far more advanced than any of us realise, but it does look like their are alot of barriers to overcome.

Originally posted by manta
Looks like their are a few people asking what happens if things like this go wrong. I too am concerned, man cant really be trusted with things of this power.

Lets say this is used as some sort of power source like nuclear, what if we get another desaster? 3.6 billion degrees is truly hot. Letting that kind of tempatures loose is going to vaporise alot of things.

This kind of tech is probably far more advanced than any of us realise, but it does look like their are alot of barriers to overcome.

Well, we wont know till we try, now will we? Man would be living in caves and scratching his flea bites if he didnt always dance at the edge of disaster.

technological evolution is an all or nothing deal. Failure either way means oblivion.

Hmmmm....could this be how a lightsaber would be made...jw.

Im surprised they were able to contain something like that. I really wish we don;t play with it until more is known. And I hope they run through the possibility of what would happen if the magnetic field failed and the heat was allowed to propagate outside the magnetic barrier.

If it is going to incinerate us, I would hope we don't play with it anymore.

Sorry but doesn't anybody else think that that temperature would ignite the atmosphere.

More info here:
en.wikipedia.org...

Ion Viscous Heating in a Magnetohydrodynamically Unstable Z Pinch at Over 2×109 Kelvin
Pulsed power driven metallic wire-array Z pinches are the most powerful and efficient laboratory x-ray sources. Furthermore, under certain conditions the soft x-ray energy radiated in a 5 ns pulse at stagnation can exceed the estimated kinetic energy of the radial implosion phase by a factor of 3 to 4. A theoretical model is developed here to explain this, allowing the rapid Like it hotconversion of magnetic energy to a very high ion temperature plasma through the generation of fine scale, fast-growing m=0 interchange MHD instabilities at stagnation. These saturate nonlinearly and provide associated ion viscous heating. Next the ion energy is transferred by equipartition to the electrons and thus to soft x-ray radiation. Recent time-resolved iron spectra at Sandia confirm an ion temperature Ti of over 200 keV (2×109 degrees), as predicted by theory. These are believed to be record temperatures for a magnetically confined plasma.

As for more energy coming out than going in: I wonder if it really does violate the laws of thermodynamics as in the x-ray output was as much as four times the expected kinetic energy input? Something funny about the results would mean their original hypothesis is incorrect. Note: they didn't say total energy observed was greater than the total input energy either.

Like it hot? How about one trillion degrees:
www.bnl.gov...

They probably sucked the energy from the Earth's core. That is where the energy is coming from. In 10 years our core is going to cease being lava and turn into rock, then we will freeze. Thanks Sandia!

Originally posted by ImplementOfWar
They probably sucked the energy from the Earth's core. That is where the energy is coming from. In 10 years our core is going to cease being lava and turn into rock, then we will freeze. Thanks Sandia!

You're kidding, right?

Thanks public education system!

Originally posted by ChemicalLaser

Originally posted by ImplementOfWar
They probably sucked the energy from the Earth's core. That is where the energy is coming from. In 10 years our core is going to cease being lava and turn into rock, then we will freeze. Thanks Sandia!

You're kidding, right?

Thanks public education system!

It was a joke.

But the energy comes from somewhere right? IT's our public education system that crams the laws of physics down our throats like gospel. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. That means whatever energy they created in the z machine came from somewhere.

If it came from the planets core, then that means the core lost energy. Now it may have set a declining reaction that will cool our earths core and end life on the planet.

That would suck.

Originally posted by ImplementOfWar

Originally posted by ChemicalLaser

Originally posted by ImplementOfWar
They probably sucked the energy from the Earth's core. That is where the energy is coming from. In 10 years our core is going to cease being lava and turn into rock, then we will freeze. Thanks Sandia!

You're kidding, right?

Thanks public education system!

It was a joke.

But the energy comes from somewhere right? IT's our public education system that crams the laws of physics down our throats like gospel. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. That means whatever energy they created in the z machine came from somewhere.

If it came from the planets core, then that means the core lost energy. Now it may have set a declining reaction that will cool our earths core and end life on the planet.

That would suck.

If anyone read the article and associated other tidbits, you'd realise that the extra energy is thought to have come from a brief fusion reaction created by the intense temperature.

Nuclear reactions are the only known process from where you can get out more energy than you put in.

As for the others fearing a global inferno if this thing pops, don't worry your pretty little heads and go back to your TV.

If it pops, you'll have a very hot, but very small ball of plasma expand and cool quickly. You may end up with a pretty cool explosion, but barely enough to take out the lab, let alone the world.

EDIT: Still utterly baffled by the thought that this would "suck" energy from the earths core...Where did you get this idea from?

Mad, some people, stark raving bloody bonkers......

[edit on 13/3/06 by stumason]

Originally posted by ImplementOfWar
Im surprised they were able to contain something like that. I really wish we don;t play with it until more is known. And I hope they run through the possibility of what would happen if the magnetic field failed and the heat was allowed to propagate outside the magnetic barrier.

If it is going to incinerate us, I would hope we don't play with it anymore.

2 reasons why it won't incinerate us.

This particular reaction is apparent for only 10 nanoseconds: The reactants most likely get consumed in these 10 nanoseconds. I remember reading in one of the many articles on the web about this, is that the only thing they changed around in this particular experiment is the tungsten electrodes. They have to replace them each and every time as they get vapourized when the reaction gets above a certain temperature.

I believe somewhere in the articles on this that i read they ARE trying to get a stable reaction to last more then ten nanoseconds.

I understand that the scale they are wrking on right now, if for say the contraption did malfunction it would be minimal. But what happens when they keep trying to make it bigger and better. Eventually they will have enough mass inside the machine to make it hit critical mass to sustain itself.

Here's where the earths atmopsphere incinerating comes into play. The bigger the fusion reaction the more particles it consumes. right now the atoms being used are controlled, and very small amounts. Compared to the sun which is easily a trillion times larger version of the experiment.

The sun produces it's own fusion fuel though by fission and fusion.
thus if they made a reaction of viable size My estimate is once it breaks the containment feild it's gonna have an voracious appetite for matter.

Oxygen and other atoms in the air I think would be the first to ignite, and instantly even if exposed to those temperatures for only a small portion of a minute.

Originally posted by Magickesists

Here's where the earths atmopsphere incinerating comes into play. The bigger the fusion reaction the more particles it consumes. right now the atoms being used are controlled, and very small amounts. Compared to the sun which is easily a trillion times larger version of the experiment.e.

If it was an actual fusion reaction in the open atmosphere, the radiation would carry away the nuclear energy much faster than it could develop, and the temps would drop rapidly and the nuclear reaction would soon stop, i.e. Nuclear weapon.

In regards to the Z-machine: It's not fusion and the magnetic energy was converted to heat. The plasma was no were near the density needed to initiate a fusion reaction. The mass of the experiment will only heat a certain volume of air and once plasma is uncontained it would dissipate in nano-seconds. 3.6 million kelvins is a measure of temperature and not energy.

So no, it's not going to chain react and light the sky on fire.

Inertial confinement fusion

Originally posted by McGrude
ceases not seizes.

( ...never ceases to amaze me... )

Just use the correct version in your own post, its rude to correct people in such a crucde way.

thanks regenmacher, you saved me from a paranoid meltdown, LOL!

some one that knows more about physics then me can probably answer this because i forgot. if the temperature gets higher does the mass get larger as well? if so eventually we will create enough for it to collapse on itself by its own gravitational force to create a black hole within the magnetic field. am i wrong? im just wondering because i havent done any physics in months and have been cramming other info in my head so i cant remember.