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Thread: If you had a pinhead of extremely hot matter...

  1. #1
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    If you had a pinhead of extremely hot matter...

    If you somehow had a pinhead sized amount of air (obviously it would not be air at that point, I mean with the density of air, as for example the Solar corona is harmless despite being super-hot because it is almost a vacuum) heated to quark-gluon plasma temperature (1000 000 000 000 Kelvin or 10 to the power of 12 Kelvin), what kind of energy would it release once it would expand into a fireball. I assume that if you put it into an Earth normal pressure and temperature it would immediately expand into a super-hot fireball and explode like a hydrogen bomb.

    By the way no, I'm not obsessed with mass destruction, rather, I'm interested in high energy events in general and feel that considering such things would be very important once mankind tries to build spacecraft drive systems like fusion/antimatter/conversion drive.

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by m1omg View Post
    If you somehow had a pinhead sized amount of air (obviously it would not be air at that point, I mean with the density of air, as for example the Solar corona is harmless despite being super-hot because it is almost a vacuum) heated to quark-gluon plasma temperature (1000 000 000 000 Kelvin or 10 to the power of 12 Kelvin), what kind of energy would it release once it would expand into a fireball. I assume that if you put it into an Earth normal pressure and temperature it would immediately expand into a super-hot fireball and explode like a hydrogen bomb.

    By the way no, I'm not obsessed with mass destruction, rather, I'm interested in high energy events in general and feel that considering such things would be very important once mankind tries to build spacecraft drive systems like fusion/antimatter/conversion drive.
    m1omg High temperature physics is high energy physics, which is where we are in particle physics. The same types of algorithms used to calculate yields in hydrogen bomb explosions, are used in supernovae simulations and vice versa. If the mass is small and the energy density is enormous, you bring in Special Relativity due to the relativistic velocities too. They have found gamma ray emission from everyday lightning bolts in our atmosphere, which is cooler than your temps, and the thunder from thermal expansion of the atmosphere would be similar. Initial tests of the first hydrogen bombs had some scientists voicing concerns that the nitrogen in the atmosphere would ignite in an exothermic reaction, producing varying nitrogen oxides.....and that the fireball would spread as a ring around the world extinguishing all life above ground. More scientists thought not....the temp would fall and we'd be OK. So they set it off. Here we are. See? Everything is hunky-dorey. pete ( P.S. The atmosphere does ignite in old H-bomb videos....you see it as a big half dome for ~ 3 seconds. nice.
    and....lots of stuff around H-bombs is classified, so you'll have to search a bit for your algorithms.)

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