I read recently an article that talked about certain protons “having a temperature of 10[sup]13[/sup] degrees”. How does one interpret the temperature of a proton? As its kinetic energy?
I’ve never heard of temperature of a proton before, so I’m guessing, but here goes. The temperature of an ordinary substance is the average kinetic energy of a molecule. So, maybe the temperature of a proton is the average kinetic energy of the quarks (and gluons?) that make up the proton. I have no idea how you would go about taking a photon’s temperature, though.
I haven’t heard of it before either. My guess is that it simply has a kinetic energy that corresponds to that temperature. You really can’t define a temperature of a single particle, but if you have a collection of particles (gas or plasma), the average kinetic energy of all particles is proportional to temperature. So you can sort of associate a given kinetic energy with temperature.
scr4 said, “So you can sort of associate a given kinetic energy with temperature.” Yeah, but 10[sup]13[/sup] degrees sounds kinda energetic. Then again KarlGauss said “certain protons”. If you have a sample of hydrogen gas which is essentially protons; the temperature is the averagekinetic energy. The kinetic energy is randomly distributed. So, I suppose someof the protons would have to have kinetic energy corresponding to a temperature of 10[sup]13[/sup] degrees or even higher.
I’m still just guessing here. Do you have any more information so we can get a better idea of the context?
I always thought that temperature of an individual particle was not defined. Temperature only makes sense (to me at least) when speaking of a collection of particles.
Yeah, I agree. But the average kinetic energy in a system is kT, right? (k=Boltzmann constant=8.610[sup]-5[/sup] eV). So maybe “10[sup]13[/sup] degrees” is their way of saying "8.610[sup]8[/sup] eV proton." That’s 860 GeV - awfully fast, but not exceptional for cosmic rays, for instance.
Could this be the quark plasma/soup thing recently discussed? At CERN, I think it was, they recently got up to enough energy to make a quark plasma. That plasma could be said to have a temperature. I can’t find the articles in a quick search, so I’ll just have to WAG that the temperature would be 10[sup]13[/sup] K, give or take a few orders of magnitude. (How’s that for a hedge?)
Thanks for your comments.
The context was in an article that I was reading about the event horizon at a black hole. They were talking about the tremendous energy of the infalling mass and said, specifically, that a proton at the horizon has a temperature of 10[sup]13[/sup] degrees. They went on to say that the proton is not efficient at giving off such a high energy but, instead, transfers it to electrons which are quite effective emitters (or words to that effect).
Sorry. That should read “infalling matter” not mass.
This sounds like just poor phrasing. Any blackhole which is radiating energy due to infalling matter is going to have more than just a single proton falling in. When reading about science, it’s often a challenge to figure out what’s going on after it goes through the filter of the writer. Like lookign at a person through frosted glass, you know that the person on the other side doesn’t really look like what you’re seeing.