The entropy of systems

Still haven't read that article but where did you get that temperature from? A kilo electron volt is a very small amount of energy after all.

(edited) Just did a quick calculation and I get from using 12 kev, the upper energy of the maps, 60 million degrees Kelvin.

The point to remember though is that this is the surface area of a huge sphere. Each square metre is at 7.3E-03 k which is just above absolute zero.

Stoat,

I found the conversion from eV to kelvin at the wikipedia site:
(4th paragraph down)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_volt

(12 keV would be approx. 12 million Kelvin (1 keV) x 12 keV = 144 million Kelvin)

And also a text confirming this:
(they rounded off to 15 million K)

“Thermal Equilibrium in Nuclear Fusion
A star's core is badly out of thermal equilibrium. For a fixed temperature the constituents of an isolated system are determined solely by the temperature. For the relatively low temperature at the core of a solar mass star, a cool <b>15 million degrees (1 keV</b>), the equilibrium state is composed primarily of iron-56 and other elements with similar numbers of nucleons it their nuclei. An equilibrium state that is predominately hydrogen requires a much higher temperature, one of order 100 billion degrees (9 MeV). A stellar core therefore attempts through nuclear fusion to bring its elemental composition into thermal equilibrium.”

Note: We live comfortably in the 300 K range (30 C).
You can call 15 million degrees cool, but it is still way too hot for us.


Notice the wording of the text above: "A star's core is badly out of thermal equilibrium". Why not just say that it is NOT IN EQUILIBRIUM!
The energy state in the universe is not in equilibrium!
Also this text mentions how the sun tries to reach thermal equilibrium which is nonsense.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Stoat</i>
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The point to remember though is that this is the surface area of a huge sphere. Each square metre is at 7.3E-03 k which is just above absolute zero.
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The way I read this is each square meter is at 1 to 12 keV ! I don't understand what you are saying.

I suppose the reason I get a different temperature, is that I dundermentally disagree with the reasoning [8D]

I say that matter has space, consider it rather like an atmosphere of energy density. Back to an ideal gas, never existed, never will. Is it right to extrapolate this into a "gas" where we are dealing with one atom per 100 metres cubed? This is not a gas, it's a collection of isolated entropic systems. We take a sphere of this, of radius 0.8 Mpc, and say that it's at some absolutely absurd temperature. But its not a gas, its a very good vacuum.

This sphere is large enough to fit us and Andromeda into it with loads of room to spare. The gap between us is cold. Atoms in the gap can implode and release gamma rays. In a cluster, one galaxy can poach gas from another. We would get volumes where there would be more, or less, gamma ray and x ray production.

I believe that this makes much more sense. There's no need for strange black hole electron beams, reducing the gas pressure of volumes.

The temperature in this case has to be related to Stefan's Law. From it we get sensible average temperatures, and no hint that suns would have to be heat sinks for certain frequencies.

The tea drinkers of the Coma cluster are still safe in my view.


(Edited) Just thinking out loud[] I'm on the vertical leg of my entropy parabloa, and i want to push an electron upto near light speed. Expensive [] But I have pushed energy from one part of my complex universe to the other. The outcome is an increase in the inertia of my electron.[] This suggests a two way street. So, I jump to the horizontal leg of the entropy curve and head for absolute zero, in the hope of lowering the inertia. Now, with helium II I think I have something that shows promise. I think a good case can be made for saying that the inertia of a Cooper pair is reduced.

Back to the boundary of a galaxy. This is very near absolute zero but its not a condensate. The only cohesive forces it has would be faster than light gravitons. I don't think that its going to be a diamagnetic but it will have some of the rigidity of the "real" part of a complex space. Bite the bullet and say that its mass will remain the same but its inertia will be near zero.

I really like the idea of a crystal sphere[] and the idea that two small boys and a dog could push a galaxy round the floor. Although the idea that a galaxy cluster, might just be some kid's bag of marbles, doesn't do much for the old ego[][][8D]

Stoat:
... This is not a gas, it's a collection of isolated entropic systems. We take a sphere of this, of radius 0.8 Mpc, and say that it's at some absolutely absurd temperature. But its not a gas, its a very good vacuum.

GD:
What you are describing are plasmas.
This is what the article "Chandra temperature maps for galaxy clusters with radio halos" is describing also:

"While the cluster X-ray emission is due to thermal electrons
with energies of several keV, the radio halo emission at
1 GHz is produced by synchrotron radiation of relativistic
electrons with energies of 10 GeV in magnetic fields with
B ' 0:5 - 1 G."

Stoat:
This sphere is large enough to fit us and Andromeda into it with loads of room to spare. The gap between us is cold. Atoms in the gap can implode and release gamma rays. In a cluster, one galaxy can poach gas from another. We would get volumes where there would be more, or less, gamma ray and x ray production.

GD:
I think you are missing my point: before getting to the center of a cluster, galaxies merged several times already. So what you say is ample space for two galaxies, is maybe an agglomeration of ten, twenty, or fifty galaxies.

Stoat:
I believe that this makes much more sense. There's no need for strange black hole electron beams, reducing the gas pressure of volumes.

GD:
These are not strange: this is fact.

Stoat:
The tea drinkers of the Coma cluster are still safe in my view.

GD:
I am still not convinced.
I will try to find temperature maps of galaxies in our neighbourhood of space and compare.

There's no sign of huge spiral galaxies in a cluster. That doesn't mean that such things might not exist, only that we haven't found a cluster old enough to have them.

The articles and paper do a good job of of awakening curiosity. It obviously worked as they got their rather expensive toy from government funding. Their proviso explanations though, I think are simply wrong.

The intergalactic medium is not a plasma, in no way can it be described in terms of an ideal gas law. Where is the energy to create vast magnetic fields coming from? How can we create a plasma and have "structures" in it, that stretch for thousands of light years? If black hole jets are electrons and protons, where do the neutrons go? The beam has mass, what's its relativistic mass? The galaxies in a cluster have velocities which should expel them from the cluster over time, why does the cluster stay together? Two galaxies "collide" suns don't actually smash into each other, it's too slow a process. If it's the gas that collides, then there still wouldn't be enough energy to produce these x rays.

[]Hey, the subject is still in its infancy, best not to jump to any great conclusions just yet. My view is that there's a boundary shell around a galaxy that has odd properties. It can produce gamma rays and xrays, as well a a slew of pi mesons. We are talking surface areas and not vast volumetric plasmas. If it turns out that I'm wrong, then I'll have to drink a silent toast to the dead tea drinkers of the clusters but I'll still want to know why the galaxies there look much the same as ours. Their suns would have to be heat sinks for certain frequencies, and I don't see how that could work.

(Edited) One notion that I think we have to look at. If at the boundary of a galaxy, isolated atoms implode, then we have to consider the idea that the neutron is made up of electrons and positrons. Now I happen to like this idea [8D] After all, every schoolkid asks the question about the continents fitting together like a jigsaw but it's not that long ago that they would have got a clip round the ear for suggesting such a stupid thing. A neutron made up of half positrons, half electrons does explain where all the positrons went to. If at the boundary layer, atoms are destroyed shouldn't we have some very odd things happening indeed[]

Think of a galaxy as a bubble with a surface tension, then take a few thousand of these and clump them together. The boundary layers will have some neat distortions.