Atoms Reach Record Temperature, Colder than Absolute Zero

[Skywizard]

Isn’t it something how far technology has come in the last 10-15 years to be able to take atoms below absolute zero but can’t find a cure for cancer or diabetes?

It’s still a good article to read. I posted the site below for those who are interested.


Absolute zero is often thought to be the coldest temperature possible. But now researchers show they can achieve even lower temperatures for a strange realm of "negative temperatures."

Oddly, another way to look at these negative temperatures is to consider them hotter than infinity, researchers added.

This unusual advance could lead to new engines that could technically be more than 100 percent efficient, and shed light on mysteries such as dark energy, the mysterious substance that is apparently pulling our universe apart.

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When an object is heated, its atoms can move with different levels of energy, from low to high. With positive temperatures (blue), atoms more likely occupy low-energy states than high-energy states, while the opposite is true for negative temperatures (red).

Read more: http://www.livescience.com/25959-atoms-colder-than-absolute-zero.html


Peace
~skywizard

[DeDukshyn]

Interesting ... an "out of phase" vibration ... This will have many other implications than mere "super cold" methinks ;)

[Skywizard]

Interesting ... an "out of phase" vibration ... This will have many other implications than mere "super cold" methinks ;)


Quote from artical:
"Negative temperatures could be used to create heat engines — engines that convert heat energy to mechanical work, such as combustion engines — that are more than 100-percent efficient, something seemingly impossible."

If gas or oil is not involved, it will never get off the drawing board! :no:

Only Now Exists
~skywizard

[Tesseract]

Interesting piece. If I understand correctly the 'negative temperature' label is given when the kinetic energy distribution is the opposite of normal. For me, this is a rather different concept than making something 'colder' than absolute zero. One of the most interesting things I learned at university is that at absolute zero, molecular bonds are still vibrating at a frequency that is a function of plank's constant. When I first went to this article I tantalizingly thought that maybe they had reduced or stopped this vibration - something that in my mind could be a route to a new energy source [if one assumes nature would intervene and start the vibration up again by some unknown means].

An interesting property of these negative temperature materials is that they would make nuclear fusion reactions much easier to initiate (a high proportion of nuclei would have a high amount of energy). If there are large bodies of negative temperature materials in the universe I wonder if their elemental spectra would give a unique signature, for hydrogen would become less common and heavy elements more common - the opposite of normal. Would also be interesting to consider the cold-fusion phenomenon in light of negative temperatures, is the confinement of the deuterons in the palladium host structure a parallel to the magnetic confinement used by these researchers? Just a thought.

[Operator]

Isn’t it something how far technology has come in the last 10-15 years to be able to take atoms below absolute zero but can’t find a cure for cancer or diabetes?

This feat by itself shows how little we actually know ... Add on top that some things they really
don't want to be known and we end up in the situation we are in now.