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Comment by jiofj | Hacker News Reader

Given enough temperature, can't you melt an egg?

It's in fact pretty easy to melt an egg. First, raise it above 29 degrees Fahrenheit or so, and this will melt the internal section. Remove this melted internal section and set it aside. Now melt the external section, which is mostly calcium carbonate, by raising it to about 1,517 degrees Fahrenheit. There, a melted egg.

Can this be called "melting"?

"In 2015, a team of chemists in the US and Australia showed they could reverse the process. They added urea to liquefy the boiled egg whites, then put them in a vortex device to pull apart the proteins and return them to their original state." https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/can-you-unboil-an-egg

I believe it’s theoretically possible (practically impossible) if done in vacuum (to prevent oxidation) and you somehow increase the density of the egg to remove any vapor pressure (to prevent vaporization).

Just guessing here. I’m no thermodynamics expert, just a guy who melt things occasionally.

At atmospheric pressures it would sublimate rather than melt, so it’d be even worse in vacuum. You’d need a reducing atmosphere with high pressures. Carbon is not that easy to oxidise, but there is some oxygen in the egg. So you should be able to do it in a container filled with argon, with an oxygen getter. You’d need to bring it to 106 atmospheres (easy) and 4600 K (really quite hard). The good thing is that at these pressures you should not have issues with the water expanding too much. It’d be better to have a hole in the shell, though.

That is ignoring any interaction with the shell, which should melt around 1600 K.

Doesn't look like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imVKSskCB4I#t=3m50s

Was that guy not thinking when gluing something down with hot glue that he was about to point a blowtorch at?

Cook, yes. Burn, yes. Vaporize, yes. Melt, no.

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