Scientists Chill Atoms to Negative Temperatures

[Giyguy]

I really hope the news actually did their jobs correctly on this one.

oh, wait, it's the news, they never do their jobs, false hope spot everybody, get back to your lives.

 

[Anti-American Eagle]

Science, stop it! You're scaring the children... and freaking me out... were you getting high with magic again?

 

[ShindoL Shill]

I have always had a theory that the universe is just fucking with us.
I think this proves it.

Lord Kelvin must be spinning in his grave so fast that you could hook a generator up to him and call him a power station!

A very efficient power station, apparently.

 

[Fearzone]

Cool. No pun intended. Thanks for the heads up. Looking forward to learning more about this.

 

[Denamic]

Wait. Doesn't this violate the laws of thermodynamics?

That's not even possible in any sense.
If something appears to 'violate' laws of physics, you just don't understand the laws of physics well enough.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

This article more than any other science related blurb in recent memory strikes me as being complete BS. It instantly reminded me of that article where that website kept pestering people for unpaid submissions and then had to retract a story that was totally made up of gibberish that sounded plausible.

This doesn't even sound plausible.

Cool news if its true. I just find the notion of reverse entropy and energized particles glomming together instead of vibrating out to do their own thing, in contradiction to every previously observable instance of how matter behaves, is a bit much.

The part where we will have perpetual engines and such sounds silly as well.

The unsaid part where these new systems of endless energy overload and start a crazy chain reaction that vaporizes the planet and sends radioactive chunks of it to rain down on some distant world that become the only weakness for their version of superman does strike me as entirely plausible ._.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Does this article mean to say dark energy instead of dark matter? As far as we know, dark matter just has mass, not "negative pressure".

 

[EHKOS]

...my first thought was wtf. I don't understand any of this. But...but, does that mean that processor heatsinks could be amazing? This....this is breaking my brain.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Sounds more like they created antimatter to me... but what do I know.

Well they've done that too, but in this case they're just fucking around with regular matter.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

The unsaid part where these new systems of endless energy overload and start a crazy chain reaction that vaporizes the planet and sends radioactive chunks of it to rain down on some distant world that become the only weakness for their version of superman does strike me as entirely plausible ._.

Well, their version of superman would be from Earth, so that would make him... man-man? Ordinaryman?

 

[Strazdas]

I love how none of this actually makes any common sense. They have found a way to get past absolute zero without hitting it, it gets hotter than positive numbers could get, and it could lead to more than 100% efficient machines.
I love science.

yeah, i had to really rack my brain around to figure this out too. eventually i think its labels. they found a new method that does not cool particles to 0 temeprature but affects them different that would effectivelyl ead to negative temperature, but due to method it doesnt, and they called that method negative temperature making, and so on.
well either that or all laws of physics be damned we just broke the universe.

Wait. Doesn't this violate the laws of thermodynamics?

That's not even possible in any sense.
If something appears to 'violate' laws of physics, you just don't understand the laws of physics well enough.

well if the scientists aren't playing an early april fools joke and the article is not misquoting anything or missing some relevant context we just bloody damn broke the universe. hows that for violating laws of physics?

 

[Erttheking]

....I think science just broke reality.

 

[Eomega123]

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, science.
Science, mindfucking everything, in the best possible way.

 

[Pikeperch]

I was going to go off on a rant about what negative temperature is, and why it doesn't defy our laws of physics of any way, but I saw that the ars technica link actually does a decent job of explaining it. It also has a link to the paper.
Now, if everyone going off about science breaking reality would kindly read that first I'd be happy as a clam. Or any text book on statistical physics. Please.

 

[ascorbius]

Well of course negative temperatures are almost infinitely hot, we're in a computer.

-1 in 8bit Binary is 11111111 which is 255 if you're not using two's compliment to represent the number.
The universe obviously uses much bigger numbers than that so it would appear to be infinitely hot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two's_complement

 

[Al-Bundy-da-G]

Wait. Doesn't this violate the laws of thermodynamics?

Nope the law of thermodynamics states that it is impossible to reach absolute zero. So they did the next best thing the skipped absolute zero and went into the negative Kelvin temperature range.

Science is fun like that.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

Anyone else read the title and think "well no shit its the middle of winter"?

 

[Madgamer13]

Greets!

Pay attention to this quote from the article here on the escapist:

"Theoretically, this innovation could lead to more than 100% efficient engines, because of the way heat would flow around the entropy sink that is a negative system. "Heat would flow from a negative to a positive temperature system," said a study scientist, "because negative temperature systems can absorb entropy while releasing energy, they give rise to counterintuitive effects."

They're trying to make a perpetual energy generation system by extending the laws of thermodynamics. Pay no heed until they have a real, working prototype.

 

[Ukomba]

So, would it mean writing a new law of Thermodynamics, or extending the 3rd?

It doesn't break the third law of thermodynamics, because that only says that you can't get zero temperatures. These guys got to negative temperatures by going through infinity, by being very clever with the definition of temperature and the idea of entropy.

I want to make it clear that they have not created anything with negative heat. This thing still has positive heat and positive energy.

I didn't say it broke the 3rd, just that it might need to be extended to reflect this reversal. I don't know that it Breaks the 2nd law yet either.

Well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

As for the second law, while they did manage to decrease the entropy of this supercooled whatever-it-is, the equipment they used will almost certainly have raised entropy in the surrounding environment, so the second law's fine too.

My thinking too. However, I'm not sure what the properties of this 'negative' heat substance is, or how, once negative, it gets heated up. If, after crossing the barrier, it stays there, it is possible that a closed system with it could lower entropy. Don't really know enough about it yet.

 

[Redingold]

So, would it mean writing a new law of Thermodynamics, or extending the 3rd?

It doesn't break the third law of thermodynamics, because that only says that you can't get zero temperatures. These guys got to negative temperatures by going through infinity, by being very clever with the definition of temperature and the idea of entropy.

I want to make it clear that they have not created anything with negative heat. This thing still has positive heat and positive energy.

I didn't say it broke the 3rd, just that it might need to be extended to reflect this reversal. I don't know that it Breaks the 2nd law yet either.

Well, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

As for the second law, while they did manage to decrease the entropy of this supercooled whatever-it-is, the equipment they used will almost certainly have raised entropy in the surrounding environment, so the second law's fine too.

My thinking too. However, I'm not sure what the properties of this 'negative' heat substance is, or how, once negative, it gets heated up. If, after crossing the barrier, it stays there, it is possible that a closed system with it could lower entropy. Don't really know enough about it yet.

Nonononono. This thing does not have negative heat, it has negative temperature. Heat and temperature are not the same thing, though they may seem that way in common usage. Heat is just transferred energy, temperature takes account of both energy and entropy. The entropy is what they fiddled with to get negative temperature, not the heat.