I’ve heard a few times now in various scientific fields, mainly experiments, about things getting as hot as the sun.
How is this possible? Surely if you do something and you create heat that is that hot it would melt anything surrounding it?
Would love to know how this works 🙂
In: 175
The surface of the sun is “only” about 5000 degrees C. As far as astrophysics numbers go, this is pretty tame. This is hot enough to melt just about any container we can create for it, but you can always levitate it in an electromagnetic field and there are certain ceramics that can survive close to these temperatures. A small object at this temperature would put out about as much heat as, say, a burning house, so as long as you were a few dozen feet away you’d be fine.
The core of the sun, at 15 *million* Celsius, is another story. We’re certainly capable of creating environments this extreme, but it’s far more challenging. Magnetic fields become pretty much the only option to contain anything heated up to this extent. As far as destructive power, A brick of charcoal magically kept at this temperature would put out (very roughly) as much energy as a forest fire the size of a state. Containing anything at this temperature is a genuine engineering challenge involving ingenious heat dissipation and cooling methods.
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