Jonah has a good point:

I don't like it when we create conditions hotter than the interior of the sun without knowing how we did it. What if I'm in the kitchen and I accidentally put the wrong stuff together and it happens? That'd be so not cool, literally.

I think it may have involved pizza sauce.

Reading the original article, this could have large implications - they got more power out than they put in. If this can be optimized, perhaps a new source of power could be produced. The materials involved seem simple enough, and it appears to be reproducible. It will be interesting once they track down the source of the excess energy.

My 1000 to 1 shot - cold fusion baby!

My 1000 to 1 shot - cold fusion baby!

Well, at two billion degrees Kelvin, it really isn't cold fusion. BTW, does aluminum fuse with anything at that temperature? Supposedly, the plates they accelerate to generate these temperatures are made of aluminum.

No, they didn't get more energy out than in. The news report was very misleading. What happened was that the imploded gas became hotter than its kinetic energy would have caused. This is apparently because some energy stored in the very large magnetic field was unexpectedly thermalized in the plasma by microturbulence.

Z-P-M ?? (he wondered aloud)

I blame it on global warming.

I expect if you stick to a normal recipe all should be well. The article clearly says"...magnetic field...pencil lead...causes the plasma to release energy in the form of X-rays, but the X-rays are usually only several million degrees."

Thats ONLY several million, so your trusty Williams-Sonoma oven mits will more than save the day.

I blame it on global warming.

Or Al Gore was in the room talking.

Paul,
Do you have any references for your assertion about the effect of the microinstabilities?

Thanks

It's mentioned in the actual press release.

When you get an unexpected result, that's a breakthrough and it's exciting. This can lead to new understandings.

While there may be dangers, keep in mind they were talking about temperature, not heat. Temperature by itself doesn't mean much. It's heat that equates to energy. Still, the temperature is impressive.

When I produce superheated gas at about two billion degrees Kelvan, there's usually habanero peppers involved.

I understand that people say they need 4.5MK for nuclear fusion. Someone has gone and developed a device that supplies more than three orders of magnitude more hot. However, the Z-Pinch is in a huge building. Could we just say "maybe" we've got something that will fit in garage. Hell, I'll settle fusion induced neutron generator that will enable a viable thorium reactor.

Does this mean H-bombs are now "cold" fusion? I'm so confused!

Well, at two billion degrees Kelvin, it really isn't cold fusion. BTW, does aluminum fuse with anything at that temperature? Supposedly, the plates they accelerate to generate these temperatures are made of aluminum.

Google did me wrong. Accelerating aluminum plates to three times escape velocity isn't the only thing these people do. If I had seen the old picture of the roomful of arcing, I'd have recalled what the Z machine really was.

BTW, much higher temperatures than this have been achieved in the lab. The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has achieved temperatures of around 1 trillion K by colliding gold nuclei at close to the speed of light. Granted, this temperature is maintained over a diameter of a few femtometers for about 10^-23 seconds.