3 ms·
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, t
by 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 agoI 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 agoBut 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 agoNo. 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 agoBut 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.