In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5 times hotter than the surface of the sun).
A return stroke of lightning, that is, a bolt shooting up from the ground to a cloud (after a stream of electricity came downward from a cloud) can peak at 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (F). The surface of the sun is around 11,000 degrees F.
A bolt of lightning is 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun. One thing hotter is when gold atoms are smashed together by the Large Hadron Collider, but only for a split second. Another thing hotter is a supernova.
And the answer: lightning. According to NASA, lightning is four times hotter than the surface of the sun. The air around a stroke of lightning can peak at 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, while the surface of the sun is around 11,000 degrees. Meanwhile, magma can reach temperatures near 2,100 degrees.
Lightning can get five times hotter than the sun. The surface of the sun is estimated to be 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. However, a lightning strike can reach 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This is because air is a poor conductor of heat, so it gets extremely hot when the electricity (lightning) passes through it.
In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5 times hotter than the surface of the sun).
somewhere else, depending on who you ask) may have the hottest AIR temperature on Earth, but the most scorching hot it's ever gotten on the surface of the Earth happened in 2005 when the Lut Desert in Iran reached 159 degrees F.
Lava is indeed very hot, reaching temperatures of 2,200° F or more. But even lava can't hold a candle to the sun! At its surface (called the "photosphere"), the sun's temperature is a whopping 10,000° F! That's about five times hotter than the hottest lava on Earth.
A supernova is the hottest thing in the universe. The temperatures at the core during an explosion skyrocket up to 6000X the temperature of the sun's core.
The sun is made up of a blazing combination of gases. These gases are actually in the form of plasma. Plasma is a state of matter similar to gas, but with most of the particles ionized. This means the particles have an increased or reduced number of electrons.
These powerful strikes can heat the air surrounding them to temperatures nearly five times hotter than the surface of the sun (30,000°C).
Up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe even more.
Lightning can boil water. The reason why many objects explode when struck is that the water they contain vaporises. So there is enough energy available.
The color of the bolt depends on how hot it is; the hotter the lightning, the closer the color will be to the end of the spectrum. The color spectrum in this case start with infared which is red and the coolest up to ultraviolet which appears violet and is the hottest.
Lightning is much hotter than lava. Lightning is 70,000 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to Lava at 2,240 degrees.
The hottest thing that we know of (and have seen) is actually a lot closer than you might think. It's right here on Earth at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). When they smash gold particles together, for a split second, the temperature reaches 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit. That's hotter than a supernova explosion.
Stellar black holes are very cold: they have a temperature of nearly absolute zero – which is zero Kelvin, or −273.15 degrees Celsius.
ASTM C1055 (Standard Guide for Heated System Surface Conditions that Produce Contact Burn Injuries) recommends that pipe surface temperatures remain at or below 140°F. The reason for this is that the average person can touch a 140°F surface for up to five seconds without sustaining irreversible burn damage.
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has been used to throw two gold nuclei of atoms at near light speed before they collided producing a temperature 250,000 times hotter than the centre of the sun. That's 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit and a new Guinness World Record.
It has a radius of about 1,220 kilometers (758 miles). Temperature in the inner core is about 5,200° Celsius (9,392° Fahrenheit). The pressure is nearly 3.6 million atmosphere (atm).
But what of the average temperature of space away from the Earth? Believe it or not, astronomers actually know this value quite well: an extreme -270.42 degrees (2.73 degrees above absolute zero).
White stars are hotter than red and yellow. Blue stars are the hottest stars of all. Stars are not really star-shaped. They are round like our sun.
According to NASA, the Boomerang Nebula is the coldest spot in the known cosmos, with a temperature of one degree Kelvin. One degree Kelvin is 458 degrees Fahrenheit, or roughly 272 degrees Celsius.
But with its "consistently hot footprint over a large area," says Mildrexler, who was not involved in the present study, "the Lut Desert has really emerged as the hottest place on Earth."