http://www.livescience.com/technology/060308_sandia_z.html
3.6 Billion degrees F. What kind of thermometer do they use to withstand the heat to make a measurement temperature that high?
You know what the best part of this article is? The new temperature record is sort of cool, I guess, but this (emphasis added):
Assuming it’s not due to some measurement error or something, this could be…interesting. To put it mildly.
Most new discoveries in science start out with somone saying “Hey, that’s funny.”
Followed by, “Hey, what happens if we do this?” Gotta love scientists
Wouldn’t that be a violation of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics though?
You would think disobeying the laws of thermodynamics would be grounds for serious trouble even for someone with tenure.
They need to stop playing with that thing. They’ll burn the atmosphere down.
Laws are made to be broken, or at least re-written.
When the first Fusion Powersphere comes on line I want to be there.
No. Presumably some of the energy is coming from the mass of the tungsten wires being converted to energy, like what happens in nuclear reactions. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, as Einstein put it.
In a sense, they are not getting out more energy than they put in - it’s just that some of the energy that they put in as mass is coming out as energy.
What’s interesting is that, if this is true, they’ve achieved what no other nuclear fusion researcher has done yet, and that is produce a fusion reaction that produces more energy than is required to get it started. And all without actually being fusion researchers to begin with.
A really big one! With lots of mercury in it. 
Seriously, how is this measured?
I assume it is done with spectroscopy: studying the glowing plasma’s emission spectra, or the light that it emits.
Similar to how those infrared thermometers that you can buy for cooking work.
This is also how the temperatures of stars are determined.
Emission spectrum, I mean.
I am not sure your interpretation of the Z-machine experiment is correct. While it is true that the scientists involved are not fusion researchers, they were also not conducting a fusion experiment, in this particular instance. The Los Alamos Z-machine is designed to create extremely high energy x-rays, which, among other things, can be used to simulate astrophysical plasmas. These x-rays interact with a gas, causing it to implode towards some central location. The imploding gas carries some amount of kinetic energy that can be measured. However, scientists doing these experiments noticed that the total amount of energy radiated away by the hot gas is actually three to four times more than the initial kinetic energy. So, something must be giving energy to the gas. In the paper, the researchers propose a model under which energy contained in the plasma’s magnetic field explains the discrepancy.
Though fusion has, I believe, been observed to take place in the center of the Z-machine, there are two things I feel I should mention. First, the research done in the article does not attempt to use fusion to explain where the missing energy came from. Second, even if energy from fusion were to play a role in heating the gas, it would not be from fusing tungsten nuclei. Tungsten has atomic number 74, making it a very heavy element. Fusion works best on very light elements such as hydrogen. The absolute limit for exothermic fusion is silicon into iron, atomic number 26. Due to the exceptional stability of the iron nucleus, it is not possible to obtain any energy by fusing iron into a heavier element.
It would be amazing if someone found a way to actually produce energy using the Z-machine, but alas, that day is not yet here.
Interesting. Thanks for the correction - I admit I don’t know that much about this stuff.
Where did you find a link to their paper?
Strictly speaking, that’s not true. We’re perfectly capable of creating a fusion reaction that produces more energy than is required to initate it. We cannot, however, create a sustainable reaction from which we could extract energy with which to maintain the reaction. And while the physicists running the project may not be doing fusion development, they’re working in the same general area–high energy plasmas.
Regardless, it’s an interesting development, but it doesn’t call for unbridled optimism. Even if they are attaining net energy production it doesn’t necessarily mean that they can extract useful work from it or that it can be sustained for more than an instant, and clearly there is something going on that isn’t yet well-understood; they certainly aren’t obtaining energy from the fusion of the tungsten plasma. My guess is that the plasma is forming some kind of inductive loop with the magnetic fields that the machine creates and attaining higher kinetic energies in that manner.
As far as the possibility of energy generating fusion, my hopes are still on muon-catalyzed fusion, but that predicates someone figuring out how to produce muons economically (in an energy-budget sense) which may not be possible.
Stranger
And this is exactly what artists do, too.
And in fact you have to have some [post=7173533]pretty unique conditions[/post] to do that.
Stranger
Not exactly the adjective I would have chosen.
The abstract is located here , though the full text requires a subscription to the journal. The general idea is there, though.
You can e-mail me for the paper.
Sometimes followed by,“DAMN! Quick, pull the fire alarm! Get a HazMat team in here!” 
The line between high-energy physicists and crazy rednecks is thin indeed. 