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Cooling To Absolute Zero Mathematically Outlawed After a Century (newscientist.com)
After more than 100 years of debate -- which at one point even elicited interest from Albert Einstein and Max Planck, physicists have finally offered up mathematical proof of the third law of thermodynamics, which states that a temperature of absolute zero cannot be physically achieved because it's impossible for the entropy (or disorder) of a system to hit zero. While scientists have long suspected that there's an intrinsic 'speed limit' on the act of cooling in our Universe that prevents us from ever achieving absolute zero (0 Kelvin, -273.15 C, or -459.67 F), this is the strongest evidence yet that our current laws of physics hold true when it comes to the lowest possible temperature. From a report on NewScientist: Now Jonathan Oppenheim and Lluis Masanes at University College London have mathematically derived the unattainability principle and placed limits on how fast a system can cool, creating a general proof of the third law. "In computer science, people ask this question all the time: how long does it take to perform a computation?" says Oppenheim. "Just as a computing machine performs a computation, a cooling machine cools a system." So, he and Masanes asked how long it takes to get cold. Cooling can be thought of as a series of steps: heat is removed from the system and dumped into the surrounding environment again and again, and each time the system gets colder. How cold depends on how much work can be done to remove the heat and the size of the reservoir for dumping it. By applying mathematical techniques from quantum information theory, they proved that no real system will ever reach 0 kelvin: it would take an infinite number of steps. Getting close to absolute zero is possible, though, and Masanes and Oppenheim quantified the steps of cooling, setting speed limits for how cold a given system can get in finite time.
Thats really cool!
Isn't this just Zeno's paradox applied to really good fridges?
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Try to catch me, and you'll never get here.
All they need to do is to heat it to below absolute zero and then let it warm up a little.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Isn't that essentially what this is? Because you add energy when you measure, so you can never verify that it's been cooled to absolute zero.
Can't achieve absolute zero.
But we can turn it up to 11!
our new president was elected to repeal. We're going to make America Cool again!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
Would this also be a property of time? That you can't reach absolute zero because doing so, would be akin to stopping time, if only for that specific single point in space?
Now that has me wondering about the singularity in a black hole. And now my brain hearts a little as so many things seem to conflict with all of this.
in the winter, pretty sure it's colder than that.
DUDE I'M SO TECH BRO
Cooling American to absolute zero will be the coldest, it will be so cold, because a lot of people are saying that global warming is a hoax. The Chinese have absolute zero, and they're very unfair to us.
We're going to make America Cool again!
"In the car industry, people ask this question all the time: how fast does the vehicle accelerate?" says Oppenheim. "Just as a computing machine performs a computation, a car can take you to the mall."
No, still doesn't make any sense...
Blah blah blah...you can't go faster than light.
Blah blah blah...you can't cool to absolute zero.
I'll bet a politician would tell me I could do either one of those if it would my vote. Why can't physicists respect my desires like the nice men in suits do?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"How come I will never become CEO?"
The unattainability principle.
"How come I will never become president of the United States?"
Again, the unattainability Principle, and Donald Trump.
Reminds me of this engineering joke:
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were asked to review this mathematical problem. In a high school gym, all the girls in the class were lined up against one wall, and all the boys against the opposite wall. Then, every ten seconds, they walked toward each other until they were half the previous distance apart. The mathematician, physicist, and engineer were asked, “When will the girls and boys meet?”
The mathematician said, “Never.”
The physicist said, “In an infinite amount of time.”
The engineer said, “Well... in about two minutes, they'll be close enough for all practical purposes.”
Nice experiment, but only proves that with the current models its not possible.
Before quantum mechanics was discovered, people could prove mathematically that no object could jump or tunnel out of a potential well; it was physically impossible. Now we know that this is quite possible since the "laws" of classical mechanics can be violated under certain conditions.
It's no different with quantum mechanics. Well, that's not quite true: it is actually a little different. Before quantum mechanics was discovered, many physicists believed classical mechanics to be complete. But for quantum mechanics, we already know that it is an incomplete theory.
even if it wasn't impossible to cool something to absolute zero, wouldn't it be an essentially useless thing to do because once you do anything with it, it would generate some amount of heat so immediately raise its temperature slightly anyway?
(I'm imagining the passing of current on a supercooled wire or computing on a supercooled cpu)
got the premise wrong?
One: I think you mean "ruled out" rather than "outlawed." That implies some sort of change in the legality rather than a revealing of a "legality" (which is a somewhat obtuse way of looking at this since science is a system of attempting to describe reality rather than an attempt to describe some sort of human invention or behavior) that already existed.
Two: This has an interesting implication for our universe, I think. It's possible that the entropy eventually reaches 0 in the universe as a whole (since this apparently applies to localized entropy), but if that's actually impossible, it means there will always be *some* sort of entropy in the universe regardless of its size. I would think this to mean that a universe "death" of expansion is preferable to a universe death of collapse, at least from the perspective of life. With no entropy, there isn't really existence.
I don't think you need to bring time into it. Just think about the absolutes of matter.
On the one hand, there is absolute zero.
On the other hand, there is the speed of light.
These are measured as different properties (temperature vs velocity), but they are the two opposite infinite states of matter.
Absolute zero would mean the complete absence of energy. Light speed means matter has transformed into energy.
So by definition, when we're talking about matter, we're talking about the stuff that exists between these two absolutes.
(Do I have this right? I've always wondered if this is common knowledge in physics, or if I am not thinking of it properly.)
"In computer science, people ask this question all the time: how long does it take to perform a computation?" says Oppenheim. "Just as a computing machine performs a computation, a cooling machine cools a system."
Look, we get it. Social media billionaires used computers to become rich and famous. But, making a strained analogy to computers is just saying you're desperate for attention. You won't make physics any more trendy by blatantly transparent ploys.
Yeah we need a Library of Congress analogy. C'mon /. don't disappoint.
that anyone cooling anything to absolute zero will be put into Markov chains?
Nothing engorges a clit faster than a hot lesbian librarian.
All this legislation is just stifling innovation. It's ridiculous. Next thing you know, they'll require that all cooling systems be equipped with seatbelts. "Think of the children!", they'll say. "Get off my frigid lawn!", I'll say.
And the practical application for this is??? I mean, sure from a science geek perspective it's interesting (and not unsurprising). But what purpose does this serve? What does having this knowledge do for us?
The T-s diagram is quite precise and is used by a few gas turbine designers and millions of students to pass AE303 Gas dynamics II
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So what if it takes infinite number of steps? There are plenty of infinite serieses with a finite sum. Of course he might have proved the series is not convergent. But I'm stuck with a 2g connection that sucks, giving me a good excuse for but reading the fantastic article.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Is this the new gasy nigrs in space?
--
.nosig
"a temperature of absolute zero cannot be physically achieved because it's impossible for the entropy (or disorder) of a system to hit zero"
Would that then not imply that our universe is incapable of experiencing heat death?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Outlawed"
I do not think that word means what you think that word means.
Proven impossible, proven unattainable, sure...but it wasn't "outlawed".
I mean, if it was then why not just repeal that law and cool stuff to absolute zero?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The parent comment was meant as a JOKE!.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
No. Things can still reach a universal equilibrium temperature in which no useful work can be extracted. Heat death doesn't require the attainment of absolute zero.
This does not bode well for Fat Americans, who still believe that the First Law of Thermodynamics can be broken.
If you outlaw absolute zero, only outlaws will have absolute zero.
Cooling To Absolute Zero Mathematically Outlawed
Is there no end to what Trump will mandate with an executive order???
I'm sure that even now protests are forming around every liquid nitrogen tank in the country.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am not a physicist, so I may be wrong, but I always thought that absolute zero is theoretically impossible. The temperature is a measure of random energy per degree of freedom. By Heisenberg principle delta_x * delta_p = h/2pi. So you have to get delta_p = 0 for absolute zero or delta_x = infinity.
The best you can get in lab by cooling atoms is to create a Bose Einstein condensate in which all the atoms acts as a single coherent wave. This can reduce random KE significantly. For particle of size of hydrogen atom and container of size of 1 ft, this value is of order 10^-9 K.
a physical system, perhaps, cannot reach complete entropy. but a purely mathematical system can.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
They're all wrong. I was cooled to absolute zero at work today!
*sigh* Plancks length. Measuring things to the precision of a planks length was obviously mastered quite some time ago. That's what i get for trying to make a quick post just before running out of the office for the day =P
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Just calculate 0Â kelvin to a temperature we can actually achieve. Nevermind the physics that comes with it. Bah, details!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
I'm glad. Imagine how much you'd have to spend on a special suit to withstand such temps.
It is possible to forcibly cool certain substances via tuned lasers. This is a bit of a different phenomenon than is generalized in the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics. Rather than allowing heat to distribute and removing a fraction of it, this is instead forcibly removing quanta of it.
Look up "Anti-Stokes cooling."
to the LIMIT!!!
captcha: summons
Quantum physics is correct because it works.
Electrons don't orbit the atom: they habituate a probability cloud.
Lagrange points are an end product of classical mechanics. While there is a very small correction for atomic energy levels due to gravity, there is no evidence that classical mechanics is able to explain the atom: indeed much evidence exists to the contrary.
Atoms aren't really nothing, since a lot of their space is either occupied by probability clouds or fields. All you have to do Nathan is show me how an alternate model (your Lagrange-model for example) can predict the properties of matter and explain the energy levels of most atomic systems. I don't care if your model is based on classical mechanics or unicorn farts, I just want to see some results.
It is impossible to show what you want to see in text format. I could describe the process of how a hydrogen atom comes into existence. But it would be difficult for me to describe in text.
I have done videos before giving insights into the obvious as here is one I did almost 3 years ago... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsSZ5tMXvQs
I've long ago contemplated about doing another about how the physics train derailed many moons ago and never got back on track.
The model for the atom current mainstream physics would have you believe, does not account for heat, conductance, magnetism or even the process of fusion or fission, let alone radioactivity. The proper geometry of the atom would let even a 5th grader understand how heat allows for expansion or contraction of an atom, the current one doesn't.
The proper geometry of the atom explains why it degrades from uranium a step at a time by squeezing out helium each time until it turns to lead and then degrades to silver after squeezing out an atom of Bromide.
It also explains why an atom of uranium is radioactive, because there is a stable krypton atom inside of a larger Barium atom and the krypton atom spins at a faster rate than the Barium atom does. A tone of 440hz(natural A) and a tone of 500hz will produce a harmonic of 60hz, it will also produce a harmonic of 940hz. In a radioactive element like uranium, the one stable atom inside another with slightly different infrared frequencies end up producing the gamma frequencies too.
Fire enough neutrons into the inside krypton atom and it becomes unstable, starts rocking back and forth violently inside the Barium atom and eventually finds a way to pop out from inside. That Barium atom now with nothing on the inside contracts in size and conservation of motion says the smaller it gets the faster it has to spin, much like a ice skater spinning and pulling her arms in to spin faster. And as I have stated before with infrared energy, the faster the spin of an atom the more heat it will give off. WHICH is exactly the reason why nuclear fission produces so much heat. Well, actually it is just giving off the heat that it took to make the uranium atom in some supernova long, long ago.
The proper geometry also makes it very visually easy to explain why iron is a conductor and magnetic and copper is a conductor and not magnetic. It is the same geometry that will explain why hydrogen will never be a superconductor and helium with out doubt will be.
Magnetism happens because of where electrons LaGrange points happen. Have you ever wondered why running a magnet over an iron pole for it to become magnetic itself only to watch it become non-magnetic in a few minutes. That happens because the original magnet has dragged electrons from a stable LaGrange point to an unstable LaGrange point spinning inside of the atom forcing a LaGrange point to occur outside of the atom where other electrons are likely to migrate to pulling the atom along with it. After time, those electrons eventually migrate back to the stable LaGrange points inside of the atom. There are several LaGrange points between the earth, sun and moon. Putting an object of mass at those LaGrange points takes zero effort for them to stay at those LaGrange points. Same basic principle as electrons.
What you perceive as north and south poles are just LaGrange points inside and outside of the atom. If a north pole would be a LaGrange point outside of the atom, a south pole would be a LaGrange point inside of the atom. That is why north and south poles attract and like poles would repel,
It will make people laugh at quantum mechanics and think how stupid they must have been to swallow that much Kool-Aid, and brings Sir Isaac Newton back to the status he should have been.
The current accepted geometry of the atom and the electrons (laughably) orbiting outside of the atom is just stupid. What is even more stupid to me, even back in 9th grade physics, is that there can only be one electron per atom. If an atom is a trilli
Quantum physics is correct because it works.
Do you also know what is correct because it works?
Around 2000 years ago, a Greek Astronomer developed a chart of how the Sun and planets orbited the Earth. He had been searching for years for how it worked and then one day out of a dream or something, made the Sun and planets dance in these elliptical motions around the Earth. Other mathematicians jumped on the band wagon to prove that is how it worked. It was all that was needed by the Catholic Church to prove that Earth was the center of the universe. The Catholic Church was the government back then.
I am skeptical(*I corrected your spelling) because if any physics research group observed nuclear decay of matter in a low-energy environment that would be instant fame/glory/grants/Nobel price winning
It was the accepted method for at least 1000 years, because there were so many other people out there that wanted it to work, including the Catholic Church. It was based on something that was slightly wrong with other people adding other assumptions that were slightly wrong until the entire thing becomes laughable.
Well, that was until Galileo Galilei threw a monkey wrench into the works and stated that the entire thing was wrong. He moved the Sun to the center and the whole thing worked without all the "Weirdness"(remember that word) that was in the original map of the planets.
"OH GOD no" you can't take the earth out of the center of the universe, it just works that way. Do you know how many Astronomers, Physicist and Holy Clerics shouted him down and told him to go read a book? They were so afraid of the earth not being the center of the universe that Catholic Church house arrested him for the rest of his life.
It was only like 10 years after his death that someone else proved Galileo correct. So much for the smart people of the world.
Electrons don't orbit the atom: they habituate a probability cloud.
Can you read a few sentences ago where I refer to "Weirdness"....??
Quantum physics is correct because it works.
I hope we all don't drink the Kool-Aid for the next 1000 years.
Quantum Mechanics was developed because some physicist didn't understand what he was looking at and dreamed up something off the wall that nobody else could understand, or prove at the time....
instant fame/glory/grants/Nobel price winning
Repeat the steps of bad research based on other bad research seeking
fame/glory/grants/Nobel prize(*I fixed that word for you too) winning
a 100 times or more and you end up with the Large Hadron Collider that will amount do ZERO research, and you have the state of Physics today.
The Large Hadron Collider was created to give Physicists life long employment and never ever have to discover anything. Isn't that the definition of the perfect job? Wouldn't you want a job that would pay 6 figures for the rest of your life and never really have to do anything other than make it look like you are doing something?
You never know, they might possibly find something. As I have said many times before if you go hunting GHOSTS you eventually one day find a GHOST.
Wasn't there an article here not long ago that stated at least 50% of the experiments in papers posted Arvix were not repeatable?
Physics today has not learned anything from history and has repeated itself.
I'm not saying that I am Galileo or any thing but there is a better way of drawing a map of the Atom. I bet you can guess to the nearest 10,000 people, how many of those that have shouted me down and told me to go read a book. Quite ironic I would say.
Again I will say, there are not a lot of smart people in this world.