3 ms·

After thinking about the article's headline some more, I've come to the conclusion that to get a lot of attention and hype you need to: 1. Take a word that

After thinking about the article's headline some more, I've come to the conclusion that to get a lot of attention and hype you need to: 1. Take a word that has a commonly accepted meaning 2. Redefine the word to a more general case using advanced physics or chemistry 3. Find an obscure property that this new definition allows 4. Shock and amaze! (See "mass" for similar phenomena.)

aphyr 14y ago
I know you're being sarcastic, but this is a wonderful thing about science! Commonly held, intuitive, time-honored ideas about temperature, space, mass, time, turn out to break down in edge cases, and those breakdowns drive the development of new mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The universe is so much deeper, stranger, and more beautiful than we ever imagined. If you aren't compelled by ideas alone it can feel like much ado about nothing (who cares about tiny variations in spacetime curvature?), but without general relativity, we couldn't have built the GPS. Without quantum mechanics we couldn't have lasers--and without lasers, no modern internet. Pretty cool time to be a human being, I think. :)
- pm90 14y ago
  I think the parent was criticizing the unfortunate naming of these discoveries (designed to capture the imagination of laymen) rather than the discoveries themselves.
  - mvaliente2001 14y ago
    But in this case, it seems to be correct. So, we, laymen, should update our concepts and throw away the idea that "0° is the lowest temperature."
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      No. If you don't know the abstract definition of temperature from statistical mechanics, you haven't learned anything from the headline "temp can actually be negative (properly defined)"
    - cygx 14y ago
      But 0K (notice there's no °) is the lowest temperature - it's just that it's also the hottest temperature, depending on which direction you're coming from. Temperature has a nice interpretation as average energy for classical systems, but in a sense thermodynamic β = 1/kT is the more 'natural' quantity that has a pole at T = 0, corresponding to infinite hotness or coldness respectively.
riffraff 14y ago
"quantum teleportation" fits the bill
mmcnickle 14y ago
"Faster than light" stories in relation to phase velocities.

aphyr 14y ago

I know you're being sarcastic, but this is a wonderful thing about science! Commonly held, intuitive, time-honored ideas about temperature, space, mass, time, turn out to break down in edge cases, and those breakdowns drive the development of new mathematics, physics, and chemistry. The universe is so much deeper, stranger, and more beautiful than we ever imagined. If you aren't compelled by ideas alone it can feel like much ado about nothing (who cares about tiny variations in spacetime curvature?), but without general relativity, we couldn't have built the GPS. Without quantum mechanics we couldn't have lasers--and without lasers, no modern internet. Pretty cool time to be a human being, I think. :)

pm90 14y ago
I think the parent was criticizing the unfortunate naming of these discoveries (designed to capture the imagination of laymen) rather than the discoveries themselves.
- mvaliente2001 14y ago
  But in this case, it seems to be correct. So, we, laymen, should update our concepts and throw away the idea that "0° is the lowest temperature."
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    No. If you don't know the abstract definition of temperature from statistical mechanics, you haven't learned anything from the headline "temp can actually be negative (properly defined)"
  - cygx 14y ago
    But 0K (notice there's no °) is the lowest temperature - it's just that it's also the hottest temperature, depending on which direction you're coming from. Temperature has a nice interpretation as average energy for classical systems, but in a sense thermodynamic β = 1/kT is the more 'natural' quantity that has a pole at T = 0, corresponding to infinite hotness or coldness respectively.

riffraff 14y ago

"quantum teleportation" fits the bill

mmcnickle 14y ago

"Faster than light" stories in relation to phase velocities.