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[Merged]Atoms reach record low temperature


B Randomly

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it sounds like a contradiction in terms but scientists have reached temperatures that go beyond absolute zero in a lab, and get hotter as they do so.

Whereas we’re all aware of what happens when temperatures hit negative temperatures on the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales (hint: it gets really cold), the Kelvin scale is an absolute temperature scale in physics where it is not possible to go beyond 0 degrees Kelvin. Therefore, the lowest point that any temperature can reach is 0 K or −460 °F (−273.15 °C); at least that’s what scientists thought until till now.

Read more at http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/68525-beyond-absolute-zero-temperatures-get-hotter#ItFVrDXPzr8QG8Pi.99

Edited by ozman
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Was just reading about this. Very weird. Look forward to reading more about it in years to come.
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Wouldn't the use of magnetic fields and lasers as observational tools impart a small amount of energy to the observed atoms effecting the results ?

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Ok, so now they have to change what absolute zero is........however, when it's cold enough that all molecular movement stops, that's pretty cold......and they saying they have some thing colder? How did they measure it......if nothing moves, not even atoms.....how do you measure it? Seriously.

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WoW, A medium iv never heard of.. Something that is soo... COLD that it stops moving. and now.. A point that is apparently. MORE COLD, than that.. HAve you ever heard of Cold fire? or hot ice?? Crazy theorys..

Question.. does anyone realize world Phenomena.

Edited by KainFall
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Ok, so now they have to change what absolute zero is........however, when it's cold enough that all molecular movement stops, that's pretty cold......and they saying they have some thing colder? How did they measure it......if nothing moves, not even atoms.....how do you measure it? Seriously.

I believe they measure with equations, In science lot of things can be measured with equations.

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I believe they measure with equations, In science lot of things can be measured with equations.

Then they are doing it wrong. Math =/= reality.

And there is no such thing called no movement. When an object seems to be immobile, it could be in movement compare to other objects.

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http://www.livescien...olute-zero.html

Did anyone else see this? Pretty interesting read..

I can go one better than that lol.

When asked for an example of the smallest amount of energy or mass possible people usually state the vaccum of space but they are wrong. I shall use the ocean to demonstrate why. When people talk about sea level they forget the sea isnt flat because its surface has waves which oscillate. The vaccum of space does the same and oscillates around zero energy and zero mass.

You can collect the bits of energy that are below zero and its an exotic form of energy called negative energy. Due to the way in which waves behave all you need to do to turn it into a viable energy source is have two mirrors facing each other in a vaccum. The negative energy attracts the mirrors together.

The energy particles resulting from this small amount of exotic energy are like photons but called ghost particles. Anyway you can produce an exotic negative energy laser beam using them which instead of burning a whole through an object freezes it and drains its energy away. That includes going below absolute zero.

Exotic negative energy violates entropy, the energy is demonstrated to exist in the laboratory and its possible to create a system where the negative energy increases over time paving the way for a perpeptual motion machine.

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Ok, so now they have to change what absolute zero is........however, when it's cold enough that all molecular movement stops, that's pretty cold......and they saying they have some thing colder? How did they measure it......if nothing moves, not even atoms.....how do you measure it? Seriously.

They supposedly took the sample atoms to within billionths of a degree of absolute zero, and tried various experiments on them. At one point the atoms started putting out energy, rather then absorbing energy. So the idea is that atoms near absolute zero only absorb energy, and can not put out energy. So they think they flipped somehow into a colder state where the atoms continue to move, and start putting out energy.

I believe they measure with equations, In science lot of things can be measured with equations.

No they actually did this experiment and these are their actual results.

It is all in the article if you just read it. Some of it is heavy going, but most is not to bad.

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Ok, so now they have to change what absolute zero is........however, when it's cold enough that all molecular movement stops, that's pretty cold......and they saying they have some thing colder? How did they measure it......if nothing moves, not even atoms.....how do you measure it? Seriously.

Absolute Zero is still the lowest energy-state of matter. Yes, there are negative Kelvin, but as you decrease negatively, their energy increases.

They are saying it's colder, yet infinitely hotter, simultaneously, due to the properties it demonstrates. Colder, because it's below Absolute Zero. Hotter because a -100°K object will give energy to a 100°K object.

They measure it's movement, but I don't know what instrument they use.

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I can go one better than that lol.

When asked for an example of the smallest amount of energy or mass possible people usually state the vaccum of space but they are wrong. I shall use the ocean to demonstrate why. When people talk about sea level they forget the sea isnt flat because its surface has waves which oscillate. The vaccum of space does the same and oscillates around zero energy and zero mass.

You can collect the bits of energy that are below zero and its an exotic form of energy called negative energy. Due to the way in which waves behave all you need to do to turn it into a viable energy source is have two mirrors facing each other in a vaccum. The negative energy attracts the mirrors together.

The energy particles resulting from this small amount of exotic energy are like photons but called ghost particles. Anyway you can produce an exotic negative energy laser beam using them which instead of burning a whole through an object freezes it and drains its energy away. That includes going below absolute zero.

Exotic negative energy violates entropy, the energy is demonstrated to exist in the laboratory and its possible to create a system where the negative energy increases over time paving the way for a perpeptual motion machine.

Never heard of this before. Thank you, I'll have to look into it. Sounds like something from a comic strip... robbing energy from an object...

Question on this, as you seem to know about it... if you do this to an object, for standard's sake, say a gold bar.... Steal the energy, reduce it's temperature to Absolute Zero... When it heats back up, does it's energy return, or does the object decay?

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They supposedly took the sample atoms to within billionths of a degree of absolute zero, and tried various experiments on them. At one point the atoms started putting out energy, rather then absorbing energy. So the idea is that atoms near absolute zero only absorb energy, and can not put out energy. So they think they flipped somehow into a colder state where the atoms continue to move, and start putting out energy.

Ok, I didn't read the article just scanned it quickly. I'll have to go back and read it more thoroughly.

I do know that the Speed of Light changes, not that the speed of light actually changes but they can measure it more accurately. To the average Joe, it doesn't amount to a pee hole in the snow but it matters to high end energy physics calculations. I'm assuming the "new" absolute zero is the same sort of thing.

Edited by keninsc
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Never heard of this before. Thank you, I'll have to look into it. Sounds like something from a comic strip... robbing energy from an object...

Question on this, as you seem to know about it... if you do this to an object, for standard's sake, say a gold bar.... Steal the energy, reduce it's temperature to Absolute Zero... When it heats back up, does it's energy return, or does the object decay?

Atoms dont disappear at zero or below. If you warm it back up its the same bar of gold as before.

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Ok, I didn't read the article just scanned it quickly. I'll have to go back and read it more thoroughly.

I do know that the Speed of Light changes, not that the speed of light actually changes but they can measure it more accurately. To the average Joe, it doesn't amount to a pee hole in the snow but it matters to high end energy physics calculations. I'm assuming the "new" absolute zero is the same sort of thing.

The atoms they were experimenting with had an average temperature just above zero. Average means some are less some are more. This means some drop below zero.

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Atoms dont disappear at zero or below. If you warm it back up its the same bar of gold as before.

Good point... I wasn't sure if it was affecting it's atomic energy or not.

Edited to add: I could see something like that being used for a negative purpose too... Damn humans and their obsession with... "How do I make this into a weapon!?!?!"

Edited by B Randomly
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In my opinion, the article is definitely too sensational.

The existence and the nature of negative temperatures - in the statistical mechanics sense - is well known.

There is a reasonably extensive wiki article on the subject, the subject was treated theoretically as far back as 1951 (at least), and is discussed in Kittel and Kroemer's classic introductory text book on thermal physics.

This may be the first experimental realization of negative temperatures though.

I believe they measure with equations, In science lot of things can be measured with equations.

Actually you are sort of correct (despite what other posters have said). The authors of this paper are using the statistical physics definition of temperature, and it is - to some extent - reasonable to claim that the ``negative temperatures'' measured by the authors is just a mathematical trick.

You can see in the wiki article I linked to above, that if the total energy of the simple model system described therein is positive (i.e. more than half of the particles are in the excited state) the statistical temperature of the system will be negative.

But there can be differences between the statistical temperatures of carefully controlled ensembles and the thermodynamic temperatures of macroscopic objects.

After all, temperature is a property of macroscopic objects which determines the direction heat energy will flow. Can temperature be properly defined for only 100 000 atoms? Or even more importantly, is it accurate to define an ensemble of 100 000 atoms that start at extremely low temperatures with Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics?

The original scientific paper published in Science is here, and a draft of the paper is freely available on arXiv here. Skimming the paper, it seems (to me, anyway) what the authors have actually done is achieved a population inversion in kinetic degrees of freedom.

The authors describe the statistics of the ensemble with the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, and derive the statistical temperature from that; and the result is a negative temperature.

This is definitely a legitimate description of the system, but don't be confused between statistical and thermodynamic temperatures. The thermodynamic temperature of their ensemble would still be very cold.

The atoms they were experimenting with had an average temperature just above zero. Average means some are less some are more. This means some drop below zero.

No, it depends on the type of statistics used. In Gaussian statistics, yes. In Poisson statistics (i.e. counting statistics), nothing can drop below zero.

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this is just an idea but from what i read i got the impression that in normal possitive temperature conditions atoms have a force which repels other atoms away, so as a particle heats up and moves with more force it then pushes atoms around it to do the same. in negative energy the force is reversed to then pull sorrounding atoms causing them to slow down. is it possible that this could be linked with black holes and collapsing stars, is it poosible to use this to create extremely dense matter as possitive tempretures decreases the density of things?

Edited by dan-paul-mark
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I did create a thread, (refer to OP)... it says it's merged, so maybe a double posted thread?

You are more than welcome to have it, though.

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I understood that absolute temperature is the absence of atomic motion, This represents an absolute state of existence - a thing is in motion or it is static. In this case anything other than stasis has a temperature. There has never been an atom reduced to absolute stasis, so what they are describing must be a statistical artifact of the system and not a description of its real physical state.

Am I wrong here ?

Br Cornelius

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I understood that absolute temperature is the absence of atomic motion, This represents an absolute state of existence - a thing is in motion or it is static. In this case anything other than stasis has a temperature. There has never been an atom reduced to absolute stasis, so what they are describing must be a statistical artifact of the system and not a description of its real physical state.

Am I wrong here ?

Br Cornelius

I guess... ``sort of'' ?

The temperature that you speak of is really only rigorously defined (in my opinion, anyway) in terms of a statistically large ensemble of non-interacting, identical (but distinguishable) particles - i.e. an ideal gas. In that case the temperature is related to the average kinetic energy of the particles.

Since kinetic energy is a strictly positive term, an average kinetic energy of zero implies that all particles in the system have zero kinetic energy.

So in this situation, absolute zero does correspond to a complete absence of motion (which you rightly state has never been achieved).

On the other hand, a quantum harmonic oscillator has a non-zero ground state energy, and thus a particle in the ground state could still have a non-zero expectation value for kinetic energy. But, an ensemble of ground state harmonic oscillators would be unable to lose any additional energy to its surroundings, and therefore we should define it as being at absolute zero (in the sense that an object at absolute zero can only absorb heat from the environment, it cannot emit any heat to the environment).

But it is definitely a very technical issue, and I think one could present arguments either way.

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  • 5 months later...

What I understand this article is trying to say is, if PV=NkT, and P is pressure meaning particles hitting the wall of the container, these guys, buy making all particles attracting each other more often than repelling, virtually created negative pressure, resulting, in principle, in negative temperature.

What I want to know is, what exactly do they mean by "tinkering with the interactions between atoms until they attracted each other more than they repelled each other."

Edited by Rolci
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