kernal_task eating up memory

[buymeaniphone]

Has any one had this problem? I keep my activity monitor up while I work and I recently noticed that I have this "kernal_task" eating up 140 mb of my memory

when I try to quit the process it gives me this warning:
"The process “kernel_task” is owned by root. Quitting this process may adversly affect the performance of your computer. You need to authorize as an administrative user to kill the process."

I'm not sure if I should just quit it to see what happens, but then again I'm on my work computer and dont want to screw it up. Is there anything I can do?

 

[Makosuke]

If you were to quit it I believe your computer would crash immediately--don't.

See how it says "Process ID 0" next to it? That's because kernel_task is the low-level "foundation" for the OS. If you select "View Hierarchically", you'll see that it is at the very top of the hierarchy.

And 140MB doesn't look at all unreasonable to me; mine generally uses somewhere in that vicinity, although it's going to vary somewhat based on what your setup is.