Physicists create highest man-made temperature ever - June 28th 2012

JohnMarston · 06-07-2012 12:24PM

Gurgle wrote: »

Deadline is 2015, otherwise we have to accept that the 'Back to the Future' trilogy may not have been a genuine documentary.

Well the hoverboards and self-drying coats, cars that run on rubbish, self tying shoes, robots that walk your dog, etc

ejmaztec · 06-07-2012 12:27PM

krudler wrote: »

Or lightsabers, or portal guns, get on it science.

I've got a matter transportation chamber, if only they'd make another one somewhere where it's not pissing it down.:(

Stiffler2 · 06-07-2012 12:30PM

splashthecash wrote: »

Ah come on, are you serious??

this kind of "pointless" scientific experimentation has been the basis for all manner of advancements. Would you have felt the same over the past number of years when the LHC project was going on? the result of this only this past week was the discovery of the elusive hoggs boson which is going to open the door to god knows what! Oh and before you say "pfft, yeah some tiny particle..great news". The LHC project inadvertidly lead to the discovery\creation of the world wide web, which you are currently using and is so central to all our lives you probably don't even realise it.

What ?
Please elaborate here ?

GarIT · 06-07-2012 12:42PM

I thought all secintific discoveries were supposed to be measured in Kelvins.

For people saying that we should be givin the money to Africa, you must not realise that giving money to Africa will not increase the amount of food in Africa, it would just increase the cost of food in Africa. For money to work some countries have to be poor, its just economics.

kowloon · 06-07-2012 12:48PM

Carles Puyol wrote: »

Would that not burn through whatever container it was in?

Magnetic confinement I think. It's not sitting in contact with the container. One of the physics forum people would be useful now.

Clareman · 06-07-2012 12:57PM

How the f**k can they calculate the temperature in Fahrenheit? That was invented by using the theory that the coldest you could get was freezing saltey water in Germany, use Kelvin ffs

Stiffler2 · 06-07-2012 01:25PM

Clareman wrote: »

How the f**k can they calculate the temperature in Fahrenheit? That was invented by using the theory that the coldest you could get was freezing saltey water in Germany, use Kelvin ffs

tbf they are physicists and you proabably are not so I am going to go out on a limb here and say you are wrong and the physicists are correct.

there i said it

Nothingbetter2d · 06-07-2012 01:31PM

i bet you'd get some heat rash from that :P

sbsquarepants · 06-07-2012 01:36PM

Carles Puyol wrote: »

Would that not burn through whatever container it was in?

Well, not if it was in a thermos. Duh!!

Nothingbetter2d · 06-07-2012 01:37PM

Deleted User wrote: »

You know it is about time Africa fended for itself.

All the aid sent there over the past few decades. Ethiopia was supposed to be starving yet the population more than doubled.
Maybe that is why some kid in Africa is hungry.

I`d rather see money spent on scientific research than poured down the drain in Africa

i totally agree .. africa has no intention of sorting itself out so long as aid keeps pouring in. almost akin to the welfare spongers not taking jobs during the boom years.

Nothingbetter2d · 06-07-2012 01:40PM

well it looks like scientists are well on their way to creating scorthing hot universes with higg's boson and gold ions :P

hooradiation · 06-07-2012 01:52PM

JohnMarston wrote: »

Sorry for irking so many people in this thread. I'm all for scientific advancement that benefits mankind, i just dont see the value in what was accomplished in reaching a higher man-made temperature.

Thankfully, nobody has made you the grand arbiter of what constitutes a worthwhile scientific experiment.
So your inability to perceive the worth in a scientific achievement will continue to matter fuck all.

listermint · 06-07-2012 01:58PM

pablomakaveli wrote: »

I dont think this is a fruitless endeavour given that extremely high tempertures are required for nuclear fusion which could be revolutionary for mankind.

Major Burn!

il get my coat...

seamus · 06-07-2012 02:02PM

smash wrote: »

How could then read that temperature?

Hot stuff emits energy waves. By measuring the properties of these energy waves you can calculate how hot the source was.

GarIT wrote: »

I thought all secintific discoveries were supposed to be measured in Kelvins.

They do. Stupid American site for some ridiculous reason decided to stick a Farenheit conversion in there.

The actual measurement was around 4 trillion Kelvins.

El Guapo! · 06-07-2012 02:19PM

seamus wrote: »

They do. Stupid American site for some ridiculous reason decided to stick a Farenheit conversion in there.

The actual measurement was around 4 trillion Kelvins.

I'm surprised they didn't try to measure it in chicken nuggets.

JohnMarston · 06-07-2012 02:54PM

hooradiation wrote: »

So your inability to perceive the worth in a scientific achievement will continue to matter fuck all.

Yes, i cannot percieve the invention of the lightbulb, the mobile phone, the airplane, personal computers, the internet and so on.

Its all just over my head :rolleyes:

06-07-2012 03:02PM

seamus wrote: »

Hot stuff emits energy waves. By measuring the properties of these energy waves you can calculate how hot the source was.
They do. Stupid American site for some ridiculous reason decided to stick a Farenheit conversion in there.

The actual measurement was around 4 trillion Kelvins.

The ridiculous reason being that most people, including those of us who studied it cant remember the conversion. And if we did, we'd read it and turn it back into celcius anyway.

Its not a scientific paper.

norrie rugger · 06-07-2012 03:04PM

JohnMarston wrote: »

Yes, i cannot percieve the invention of the lightbulb, the mobile phone, the airplane, personal computers, the internet and so on.

Its all just over my head :rolleyes:

When they invented the laser, that had no real world application, would you have said that the money would have been better spent on aid?

skelliser · 06-07-2012 03:11PM

Stiffler2 wrote: »

What ?
Please elaborate here ?

the world wide web/internet was created at CERN to help scientists across europe study all the data produced from the site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web#1979.E2.80.931991:_Development_of_the_World_Wide_Web

skelliser · 06-07-2012 03:13PM

and they didnt set out to generate the highest temperature FFS!

its not like they were bored and decided to have a laugh.

Collisions in particle accelerators generate massive amounts of heat and they calculated the associated temperature.

and as alluded to earlier super hot plasma is the way forward to getting nuclear fusion working.

Nuclear fusion would end the worlds energy issues within a decade. As the main fuel is contained in water.

JohnMarston · 06-07-2012 03:16PM

norrie rugger wrote: »

When they invented the laser, that had no real world application, would you have said that the money would have been better spent on aid?

The laser was invented for no reason at all?

skelliser · 06-07-2012 03:19PM

JohnMarston wrote: »

The laser was invented for no reason at all?

LASER wasnt "invented" it came about from scientific theory and discovery.

Capt'n Midnight · 06-07-2012 03:22PM

SeaFields wrote: »

All these discoveries and advancements and still no hoverboards

We've had them for ages now :rolleyes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws6AAhTw7RA

Expect a big marketing buzz Christmas 2014

Capt'n Midnight · 06-07-2012 03:24PM

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar wrote: »

somewhere in africa a child who hasn't had anything to eat for 2 weeks is thrilled at the announcement

Yes Minister
The National Education Service
First airtime BBC: 21 January 1988

Jim Hacker: "Math has become politicized: If it costs 5 billion pounds a year to maintain Britain's nuclear defences and 75 pounds a year to feed a starving African child, how many African children can be saved from starvation if the Ministry of Defence abandoned nuclear weapons?"

Sir Humphrey: "That's easy: none. They'd spend it all on conventional weapons."

prinz · 06-07-2012 03:26PM

Faster popcorn!

Should we start a boards pool on how long it is before some nutbag gets arrested for trying to build a homemade collider in his garden/apartment/ garage :pac:

Capt'n Midnight · 06-07-2012 03:35PM

norrie rugger wrote: »

When they invented the laser, that had no real world application, would you have said that the money would have been better spent on aid?

LOL

The laser was 'invented' from the MASER

it just used light instead of microwaves.

and the MASER ?

It's what makes telecommunications satellites possible. In fact it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that many of the telecomms uses of lasers were preceded by masers.

side note

LED Lasers are twice as energy efficient as ordinary LED's

Except for emergencies Aid money is wasted.
Removing trade barriers could probably achieve as much
Not lending to corrupt regimes to build white elephants / buy weapons would achieve even more.

Oh yeah.
Concern was recently able to feed 300,00 people by mobile phone

local people bought food from local producers so no disruption of supply chains

Technology wise Africa is only a few years behind us, for stuff like Mpesa they are ahead. Experience in New Guinea has shown that it's difficult to get stone age adults to become mine engineers, but you can educate the kids to that level. Technology-wise to get from the Stone age to today takes just one generation.

norrie rugger · 06-07-2012 03:38PM

JohnMarston wrote: »

The laser was invented for no reason at all?

Lasers were initially described as solutions looking for problems. Much of what you take for granted today is the result of doing something because we can, or to see what happens if we try "X".

Accidental side effects of experiments can become more important than the experiments themselves. X-Ray photography and Antibiotics were not the focus of their respective experiments

norrie rugger · 06-07-2012 03:43PM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

LOL

The laser was 'invented' from the MASER

it just used light instead of microwaves.

and the MASER ?

It's what makes telecommunications satellites possible. In fact it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that many of the telecomms uses of lasers were preceded by masers.

Lasers are "optical masers" but did they really think that they could access optical storage, be used in multitude of surgeries, use as barcodes readers, etc?

Nope, these came about after the discovery of the Laser. So what I mean is that experimentation for experimentation sake is not a waste of money

and here is the wikipedia, explaining it much better than I

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser wrote:

When lasers were invented in 1960, they were called "a solution looking for a problem".[30] Since then, they have become ubiquitous, finding utility in thousands of highly varied applications in every section of modern society, including consumer electronics, information technology, science, medicine, industry, law enforcement, entertainment, and the military.

The first use of lasers in the daily lives of the general population was the supermarket barcode scanner, introduced in 1974. The laserdisc player, introduced in 1978, was the first successful consumer product to include a laser but the compact disc player was the first laser-equipped device to become common, beginning in 1982 followed shortly by laser printers.

Some other uses are:

Medicine: Bloodless surgery, laser healing, surgical treatment, kidney stone treatment, eye treatment, dentistry
Industry: Cutting, welding, material heat treatment, marking parts, non-contact measurement of parts
Military: Marking targets, guiding munitions, missile defence, electro-optical countermeasures (EOCM), alternative to radar, blinding troops.
Law enforcement: used for latent fingerprint detection in the forensic identification field[31][32]
Research: Spectroscopy, laser ablation, laser annealing, laser scattering, laser interferometry, LIDAR, laser capture microdissection, fluorescence microscopy
Product development/commercial: laser printers, optical discs (e.g. CDs and the like), barcode scanners, thermometers, laser pointers, holograms, bubblegrams.
Laser lighting displays: Laser light shows
Cosmetic skin treatments: acne treatment, cellulite and striae reduction, and hair removal.
In 2004, excluding diode lasers, approximately 131,000 lasers were sold with a value of US$2.19 billion.[33] In the same year, approximately 733 million diode lasers, valued at $3.20 billion, were sold.[34]

andy1249 · 06-07-2012 03:43PM

All those comments about pointless experiments just goes to show how short sighted some people can be.

When The Pioneers of the field worked out the basics of quantum mechanics at the Solvay conference in 1927 , short sighted people at the time would have said it was all just guff and nonsense , but the fact is , without quantum theory and an understanding of sub atomic particles , none of us would be typing out our thoughts on computers attached to the world wide web.

Exploitation of quantum effects are essential to modern semiconductor manufacturing , without which , your iphones , ipads , or PC's would not exist.

And without which I might add , no one would know about the starving babies in Africa either !!

A quick and not too technical introduction to how important quantum theory is to semiconductor manufacturing ... it opens a pdf and is in the format of a slideshow.

http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=semiconductors%20and%20quantum%20mechanics&source=web&cd=3&sqi=2&ved=0CFEQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fusers.ece.gatech.edu%2F~alan%2FECE6451%2FLectures%2FECE6451L1IntroductionToElectronicMaterials.pdf&ei=7vn2T4TgF9KyhAeLqYDFBg&usg=AFQjCNGIGXA1ntfZc63uA4spHDQvyBNiRA

amacca · 06-07-2012 03:46PM

JohnMarston wrote: »

Sorry for irking so many people in this thread. I'm all for scientific advancement that benefits mankind, i just dont see the value in what was accomplished in reaching a higher man-made temperature.

Its part of an attempt to understand more about the nature of the universe we inhabit...they are not simply getting funded with billions to engage in a "lets see what the highest temperature we can make is dude" style college society / mythbusters experiment (which imo would have merit also...see below)

they want to understand the universe....what laws it operates under etc.....I would have thought it would be a normal human trait to be curious about our surroundings...to want to learn more about them even if just for for its own sake....its basic curiosity

btw the search for knowledge like that throws up massive engineering challenges which when overcome almost always lead eventually to new beneficial technologies (sometimes destructive when used in what most would consider the wrong way but thats still not reason to sit on our hands and not discover them) + almost always lead to new puzzles/mysteries which pose challenges to existing theories or require them to be modified

if we as a species dont see the point in learning about the universe around us or pushing the envelope in some way then what is the point really....should we just exist to eat, sleep, pass waste and procreate?.........although that sounds good too I'll admit (especially that last part - thats why I didnt pursue a career as a scientist)

Physicists create highest man-made temperature ever - June 28th 2012

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