Earth hotter than the Sun, at least in the labs: A Z machine mystery

Scientists have produced superheated gas that exceeds temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin using the largest x-ray machine in the world, the Z machine.

13 February 2006
MUMBAI, INDIA

Science is not new to accidental discoveries – the apple hitting Newton's head cuts a familiar picture. Now, years later, another accidental scientific feat is making headlines. Scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque New Mexico have managed to produce superheated gas that exceeds temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit.

Compare this with the temperature at the Sun's interior: 'just' 15 million degrees Kelvin.

The experiment that produced the startling result was conducted on the largest X-ray machine in the world, called the Z machine. Project leader Chris Deeney said the team was "disbelieving." He added, "We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result."

The Z machine works by releasing 20 million amps of electricity into a vertical array of very fine tungsten wires, which dissolve into a cloud of charged particles called plasma. Then, a strong magnetic field causes the plasma to compress, releasing energy in the form of X-rays.

However, the temperature of these rays is usually only a million degrees and researchers are not sure how the new record was produced. There is speculation that the thinker steel wires used instead of the fine tungsten ones may have led to increased temperatures.

The experiment has been a bit of a mystery though, because the temperatures were achieved while the plasma ions were supposed to be cooling. Additionally, the Z machine released more energy than what had gone into it, a phenomenon that occurs only in nuclear reactions, leading consultant Malcolm Haines to speculate that an unknown source of energy could be involved.