  Computations of the drag force on a heavy quark moving through a thermal
state of strongly coupled N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory have appeared recently in
hep-th/0605158, hep-ph/0605199, and hep-th/0605182. I compare the strength of
this effect between N=4 gauge theory and QCD, using the static force between
external quarks to normalize the 't Hooft coupling. Comparing N=4 and QCD at
fixed energy density then leads to a relaxation time of roughly 2 fm/c for
charm quarks moving through a quark-gluon plasma at T=250 MeV. This estimate
should be regarded as preliminary because of the difficulties of comparing two
such different theories.
