Earth may be approaching super-hot gas cloud

Originally posted by mobiusmale
reply to post by Maxmars

 

Well, I guess I am missing a few physics marbles here...but how in the heck can a "cloud" that has a density of less than the best vacuum we can create on earth, have an on-going temperature of over 1 million degrees Kelvin?

that's what I am trying to understand. The hotter stuff gets, the more dense it becomes. we must be missing a key interaction in astrophysics here, because im scratching my head on that one.

We think it is gas left over from a super nova emission that happened in the past three million years or so. if its millions of kelvins now, just how hot was it when the blast occurred is the real question

drsmooth23, and mobiusmale;

the question is valid and I am laboring to find an answer because frankly... I want to know too.

at first I thought the temperatures cited were 'deduced' from infrared or other radiation measurements taken from the cloud, but even so, when discussing temperatures we are discussing kinetic energy (yes?)

If a molecule exists by itself in space, and can impact on no other molecule, how can it have a temperature at all (other than potential)?

I'll get back to you on this. Thanks for asking... I probably would have been too lazy to check it out without your prodding!

[edit on 25-5-2010 by Maxmars]

Worth considering:

On the microscopic scale, temperature can be defined as the average energy in each degree of freedom in the particles in a system. Because temperature is a statistical property, a system must contain a few particles for the question as to its temperature to make any sense. For a solid, this energy is found in the vibrations of its atoms about their equilibrium positions. In an ideal monatomic gas, energy is found in the translational motions of the particles; with molecular gases, vibrational and rotational motions also provide thermodynamic degrees of freedom.

So high energy particles can account for the temperature of the gas in question.

www.absoluteastronomy.com...

[edit on 25-5-2010 by Maxmars]