I used to work in a foundry, and every once in a while they’d have to overhaul a furnace.
The refractive material was put on wet, kind of plastered on. It went on about a foot thick that I can remember.
I never got curious enough to ask what it was made out of…any ideas?
A trillion degrees, for degenerate neutrons in a neutron star.
Nah, neutron stars don’t cut it, since the OP is looking for a solid. Neutron stars are superfluid.
Aluminum and Calcium oxides are the primary ingredients in refractory materials. There may be other materials which are more heat resistant, but they wouldn’t be as inexpensive, and none of these materials last all that long at very high temperatures and have to be replaced often.
Ah, some random searching and I found Wikipedia’s article on Thorium Dioxide, which claims ThO2 has the highest melting point of any oxide- 3390C. Higher than most elements and all but a handful of compounds (Tantalum carbide, etc.)
“The surface of the neutron star is made of iron. In the presence of a strong magnetic field the atoms of iron polymerize. The polymers pack to form a lattice with density about ten thousand times that of terrestrial iron and strength a million times that of steel.”
Neutron star surfaces, then.
OK, that’ll work, though the surface isn’t subject to nearly the same heat that the interior is.
Wooo!! You learn something new every day.
Not nearly the same temperature as the centre of a neutron star is surely a relative term. I bet that it is still pretty hot.
Back to the polymerised iron. I am going to assume that we are talking Fe nucleii here and that they are stripped of electrons. Or maybe not if it is a magnetic field that causes the structure to exist.
As a structural material (hypothetically), 10000 times the density and 1000000 times the strength sounds like a pretty good sort of a trade off. I have got to wonder what force holds the lattice together. It doesn’t sound like a typical chemical bond.
And this is getting way hi-jacky. If there isn’t a short answer, maybe it’s worth starting a new thread. Colour me intrigued.
Cite?!
Oh, wait, that was me. It’s from the Wikipedia article on “Neutron Star”.
Since such iron is held in that state by gravitational and magnetic pressure and isn’t stable otherwise, it’s not like anything could ever be made out of it.
The magnetic forces, while ludicrously strong by Earthly standards, still pale in comparison to the gravitational effects.
And yes, even the surface of a neutron star is hotter than you’ll find in most Earthly contexts, certainly hotter than any terrestrial material can withstand. Amusingly, though, it’s also true to say that the temperature of a neutron star, even in the core, is “approximately zero”, since the thermal energies of the particles are far, far less than the Fermi energies, and thus insignificant.