Explanation:
Why is this plasma so hot?
Physicists aren't sure.
What is known for sure is that the Z Machine running at
Sandia National Laboratories created a
plasma
that was unexpectedly hot.
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.
The Z Machine experiment,
pictured above,
purposely creates high temperatures by focusing 20 million
amps of
electricity
into a small region further confined by a
magnetic field.
Vertical wires give the Z Machine its name.
During the unexpected powerful contained explosion, the Z machine
released about 80 times the world's entire
electrical power
usage for a brief fraction of a second.
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.
