Physics is Magic

Via Slashdot, some crazy cool physics news.

Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin, or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit.

This is hotter than the interior of our Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say.

They don't know how they did it.

Um. What?

OK. I mean for the overall tone of this post to be positive and full of wonder. But, for the purposes of my own peace of mind, I would like to think that scientists are generally able to control whether or not they produce substances 100-some-odd times hotter than the Sun. Now, I know that there's a wide area, and many shades of gray, between completely random and perfectly predictable, but I strongly feel that physicists ought to do their very best to aim for the latter when it comes to producing the hottest substances in the solar system here on Earth.

Setting that aside:

One thing that puzzles scientists is that the high temperature was achieved after the plasma’s ions should have been losing energy and cooling. Also, when the high temperature was achieved, the Z machine was releasing more energy than was originally put in, something that usually occurs only in nuclear reactions.

Sandia consultant Malcolm Haines theorizes that some unknown energy source is involved...

I hope the article was understating things when it said the scientists were puzzled by this. It seems to me that an investigation into an unknown energy source is something worth investing a little emotional energy into.

"Huh. Well, I'm assuming the fundamental principle of the conservation of energy continued to function during this experiment. I just haven't the darnedest idea how. Well, now, that's mighty puzzling, that is."

I'm assuming the response wasn't much like that.