There is the highest temperature ever produced in the laboratory and the theoretical maximum possible. These are the limits beyond which human progress has not yet managed to reach
Of the temperature theoretical minimum possible we had already talked about it in depth in the article dedicated to the so-called . Many of you, however, are asking us if it exists a maximum temperature in the universebeyond which one cannot go. The topic, in this case, is a little more complex and requires necessary clarifications. Sit back and enjoy reading.
Advertisement
The human body
We start from the assumption that the human body has a limit temperature of 42°beyond which there is a risk of death. However, we had talked about the highest temperature ever reached on Earth and it is one of those things that we like. But what is the highest temperature ever reached in the universe and would we be able to replicate it in the laboratory?
The highest temperature ever reached by man and the theoretical maximum possible
Let’s go step by stepliterally, always starting from what we know. The core of a star like the Sun reaches 15 million degrees Celsiuswhich however are nothing compared to those of a thermonuclear explosion (350 million degrees Celsius). This in turn is much smaller than the 3 billion degrees Celsius it can reach. In 2010, by the way, scientists from the New York Department of Energy used a huge particle accelerator with the aim of generating explosions of lead ions at very high temperatures. Well, on that occasion they managed to reach the 4 trillion degrees Celsiusthe highest temperature ever recorded in the laboratory. It was an important first step in bringing us closer to what must have been a few fractions of a second after the birth of the universe. It’s a temperature 100 thousand times greater than what is inside the Sun and which exceeded the previous one, recorded in a US laboratory in Brookeven, by 30%. But let’s go back.
You often hear us repeat that immediately after its birth the universe was a quark brothgluons and electrons. Let’s talk about TeraKelvinan unimaginable value in which matter becomes a kind of primordial soup. But the highest possible theoretical one is, listen to me, the so-called Planck temperatureor the highest one allowed by quantum mechanics. It’s thought to be that one to which a black hole evaporates and, precisely: 141 followed by thirty zeros! It is a value linked to the wavelength, the shortest possible in the universe, called precisely Planck length (1.62 × 10^-26 nanometers).
Read more:
