4 ms·
There are temperatures lower than zero kelvin. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/neg_temperature.html http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/phys
by DrStalker 13y ago
There are temperatures lower than zero kelvin. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/neg_temperature.html http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/neg... for a technical description, http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-zero-1.12146 http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-z... for a more readable article.
- cperciva 13y agoThere are temperatures lower than zero kelvin. There are negative temperatures, but I wouldn't characterize them as being "lower than zero kelvin". It would be more accurate to say that negative temperatures are "higher than $\infty$ kelvin".
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoValue that reaches maximum possible energy goes negative? Sounds suspiciously like integer overflow...
- cperciva 13y agoValue that reaches maximum possible energy goes negative? Maximum temperature, not maximum energy. Negative temperatures are even higher energies. The real issue here is that T is a dumb unit -- 1/T makes a lot more sense, and when you look at it that way, the trend is just "higher energies have lower 1/T" and passing through zero is entirely unremarkable.