no absolute zero is still a thing BECAUSE QUANTUM
so itās complicated and that wired article linked at the top is absolute shit here tryĀ theseĀ insteadĀ but basically this doesnāt refer to temperature how we think of it, as in something is hot or cold, but rather to the physical definition of temperature, which is how the particles are interacting
REMINDER that iām not an actual scientist, i just watch a lot of through the wormhole and think i understand shit okay, okay
so the faster particles move, the hotter something is, and the more energy it has, and the colder something is, the slower the particles move, the less energy it has okay simple got it great. at zero kelvin (minus 273 degrees celsius) the particles stop moving altogether and that shit isĀ cold, weāre talking like vacuum of space billions of light years away from everythingĀ freezing.Ā itās impossible to get colder than that on the kelvin scale, which is why they call it absolute zero, yo
but hereās where it gets cool okay because quantum is like the acid trip of the science world and everybody wants to hang out but nobody actually understands it REALLY, because this is some seriously weird shit like āoh look here at this cool particle OH FUCK NOW ITāS A BARCALOUNGERā type business, okay, for serious, itās weird
SOOOO okay how this happened has to do with what I explained up above about energy and particles and shit hereās an example: when you boil water, as the water heats up, the molecules increase their kinetic energy over time, and move faster ON AVERAGE. but you have to remember that everything in the goddamn universe is actually made up of little goddamn particles, and each one has its OWN IDENTITY, so not all the water particles are going to have the same amount of kinetic energy. some are all like āfuck you, establishment!ā and have a lower level of kinetic energy. but the water still boils - because the AVERAGE level of kinetic energy in the particles is still enough to cook your goddamn ramen. but not all. in fact, MOST of the particles are still chillinā, and only a few heroic superman particles are the ones moving really fast and boiling your goddamn water, because low-energy states are more likely than high-energy states, which is this fancy bullshit called the Boltzmann distribution, hey look weāre learning something new
so what the fuck does this have to do with below absolute zero CALM YOUR TITS IāLL TELL YOU, basically what these goddamn badasses at the Planck Institute of Quantum Awesomeness did was invert this situation. so instead of most of the particles being low-energy and a few being high-energy, they motherfuckinā switched that shit around and most of them are HIGH-energy and just a few are LOW-energy. WHAT THE FUCK I KNOW RIGHT
so when you invert this goddamn Boltzmann distribution WHAT DO YOU GET? NEGATIVE ABSOLUTE ZERO TEMPERATURE, because temperature in this context is referring to the behavior of the particles, not how goddamn cold it is, you feel
so actually this gas isnāt cold it all ITāS REALLY REALLY HOT, actually itās so fucking hot that itās HOTTER THAN ANY POSITIVE TEMPERATURE, which is really goddamn hot, okay, hotter than the entire unf tumblr tag, probably
what the fuck though, thatās confusing YEAH I KNOW IT IS, basically take it from motherfuckinā bad ass quantum boss scientist ULRICH SCHNEIDER:
The inverted Boltzmann distribution is the hallmark of negative absolute temperature; and this is what we have achieved. Yet the gas is not colder than zero kelvin, but hotter. It is even hotter than at any positive temperature - the temperature scale simply does not end at infinity, but jumps to negative values instead.
this is super cool because they basically figured out how to REARRANGE THE UNIVERSE in order to work that bitch to produce more energy than we thought we could, which has a lot of potential as far as engines and shit go, because a theoretical engine running on negative temperature is like A BAGAZILLION times more stable and efficient than these shitty engines we use now, holy fuck i know
it also could be super cool for those badasses over in cosmology because HEY GUESS WHAT this negative temperature business seems a lot like the behavior of DARK ENERGY which is super fuckinā cool, go study that shit guys
so yeah, science, man. HIGH FIVE,Ā PHYSICISTS, GOOD SHOW