See subject. You always read “1/zillionth above…”. Molecules stop. Apparatus isn’t apparatus any more. OK.
But it wouldn’t last long. (I doubt there’s a chance of an Ice-9 scenario.)
You need infinite input energy?
Actually achieving absolute zero would be a violation of the Third Law of Thermodynamics. And in this house, we obey the Laws of Thermodynamics.
There’s something about flying a kite at night that’s so unwholesome.
best line ever.
Ice IX, on the other hand, isn’t all that hard to create. Only need to go down to temperatures about 140 degrees over absolute zero.
Thanks, sort of. I still need Amanda Hugg on this crystal Nernst thing.
People can seldom make absolute zero in tests. Long hard concentration merits something good.
Given that the laws of thermodynamics actually arise from the statistical behavior of molecules (don’t they?), might there not be rare chance fluctuations down to true absolute zero?
I hate it here! I wish I’d never expanded from the initial singularity!
You can never leave the house.
There was an excellent Nova on this subject a few years ago.
Imagine that room temperature is represented by London, thousands of kilometers from here. Then on that scale, if we imagine right here where I’m standing in Boulder is absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature, then how close are we to absolute zero? If we think of London as being room temperature and right where I am is absolute zero, then Bose-Einstein condensation occurs just the thickness of this pencil lead away from absolute zero.
The laws of thermodynamics: you can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game.
Well, temperature itself is only a statistical quantity, which only really has a meaning in the average.
Besides, every (bound) quantum mechanical system has a minimum energy below which it can’t drop, so I don’t think there’s even a theoretical chance to go down all the way.
What if we painted it blue with a white snowflake design?
The problem is, if you achieved absolute zero, you’d have every atom sand particle absolutely still. They’d have a definite location and a definite momentum, so you’d be violating the Uncertainty Principle.
But why can’t we get to 0K? What physically or quantumly stops the process?
Worse than that, you’d have another atom sandler movie.
Someone once told me that the only way to get absolute zero in one part of the universe is to make it absolute zero in every part of the universe at once.
So call a cop.
I wish I’d read that book by that wheelchair guy.