Lukeje said:
Zeeky_Santos said:
Lukeje said:
Well they function due to the fact that a negative temperature is created[footnote]i.e. a non-Boltzmann perturbed state[/footnote], so yes. They are rather cool.
[sup]Do you see what I did there?[/sup]
There is no such thing as negative temperature in science.
Seeing as heat energy is kinetic energy on an absolutely tiny scale (atoms), all temperatures are above Absolute Zero. AZ is when the atoms stop moving. You cannot have a negative temp. If you mean to say that when a laser is produced, the temperature is lowered, that would be acceptable.
A negative
Boltzmann temperature. One can define a thermodynamic temperature in terms of the Boltzmann distribution (this is an equilibrium distribution). Lasers are inherently
non equilibrium and can be interpreted as having a negative (thermodynamic) temperature. It's a quirk of statistical thermodynamics. Here, have a wiki [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature] article.
The information I gather from the article is very interesting.
"A substance with a negative temperature is not colder than absolute zero, but rather it is hotter than infinite temperature. "
It also leads me to believe that physicists should not be put in charge of naming or defining things.
1. Nothing is beyond infinity, that's fucking impossibly. The very meaning of infinity is that it has no end and thus possible was for anything to be greater in value.
2. It's still hotter dude, so this whole negative temp thing doesn't mean lasers are cool.
3. Did that Boltzmann guy miss the part of simple mathematics where positive and negative were
joined at Zero, not ended on either side.
Yeah, it makes sense this whole laser thing if you ignore the logical inconsistencies. What with the
end of infinity thing.
