Since “Absolute Zero” is the lowest possible temperature (-273.15 degrees Celsius),
is there a theoretical absolute high temperature?
Would it be the temps at the core of our sun?
Is there a ceiling on how hot it could get?
10[sup]-34[/sup] seconds after the big bang, the temperature of our universe was as hot as it’s ever been since. That seems like a good estimate to me.
Absolute zero (which doesn’t actually exist anywhere) is the point where all molecular motion stops. So maybe an absolute peak would be where it reaches light speed?
Here’s once source that says there’s no upper temperature limit.
Go to your library and find a copy of the book On Physics by Isaac Asimov. In the essay The Height of Up he discusses whether or not there is a highest possible temperature and concludes that there is not. Unfortunately, in a footnote at the very end he throws in a hooker and leaves the question hanging.
The Master speaks, pointing out that the Planck temperature (10[sup]32[/sup] K) may be a maximum in quantum gravity.
However, in a later column, Asimov reported that a physicist read the original article and did a calculation along the lines Asimov proposed, and called it the Asimov Temperature. I don’t know if anything ever came of that, however.
Yes, I imagine she’d distract him so much that he couldn’t finish answering it sufficiently.
What if you had a situation where all matter has been converted into energy? At that point could there even be said to be a meaningful temperature when there is nothing for it to affect?
Temperature is a property of matter, without matter there is no temperature.
And if you could covert all matter bar a tiny little bit into energy, contained in the last little bit, it’d probably resemble the beginning of the big bang. But that’s just my opinion.
Some like it hot, but you don’t know how hot 'till you try
Already pointed out… the exact instant immediately after the Big Bang. The only real temperature limitation is the fact that there’s a finite amount of energy in the universe.
Maybe the OP wants to know what the hottest an object, such as a star or quasar, can be?
July/August in Mississippi.
[sub]Good to see Isaac Asimov cited. He taught me everything I know about science.[/sub]
Nah. Aplomb was old Isaac’s middle name.
The footnote in question read: “This chapter first appeared in October 1959. It is pure ivory tower speculation, but it got a reader to thinking. The reader was Hong Yee Chiu, a theoretical physicist who grew curious as to what the highest real temperature might be. This led him to calculations of nuclear reactions in the center of stars, to suggestions as to the cause of star implosions and super-novae, to the role played by neutrino formation in the process, and, in general, to the founding of ‘neutrino astronomy.’ (If I can’t do great things myself, I like to contribute to the doing of them by others.)”
But Isaac never told us the result of Chiu’s calculation of the “highest real temperature.”
But it’s a dry heat.