Chapter 1: Understanding Extreme Temperatures

What is the most elevated temperature that researchers have successfully attained? A subscriber recently posed an intriguing question:

"Hello! I read that the core of the Sun reaches 15 million degrees. Have scientists ever replicated that temperature in a lab setting?"

The straightforward answer is yes, they have. The peak temperature recorded under laboratory conditions is approximately 4 trillion degrees Celsius, which is around 250,000 times hotter than the Sun's core. This remarkable temperature was briefly achieved in 2005 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) located at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

This extreme temperature is crucial as it resembles the conditions shortly following the Big Bang. The RHIC serves as a tool to simulate the universe's early moments post-explosion, providing insights into how the cosmos originated and developed.

Achieving such a high temperature involved numerous collisions of gold ions. Under these conditions, ordinary matter disintegrates, leading to the formation of quark-gluon plasma.

Quark-gluon plasma is a fascinating, hot liquid (not a gas, as previously thought), made up of quarks, antiquarks, and gluons that move in a chaotic manner. This extraordinary state of matter existed for a mere ten millionths of a second after the universe's inception. Afterward, the plasma cooled, resulting in the formation of protons and neutrons.

Sources: 1. RHIC 2. Anne Trafton. Explained: Quark-gluon plasma, MIT, — 2010

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Chapter 2: Exploring the Hottest Matter Ever Created

This video explores the hottest matter ever created, reaching a staggering 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit in 2010.

In this video, learn how scientists successfully produced the hottest substance ever recorded, pushing the limits of our understanding of matter.