Scientists Chill Atoms to Negative Temperatures
- Thread starter JonB
- Start date
Let's see if I can put my (mostly earned. One more semester to go) physics degree into use.
I'm going to ignore the fact that it's "colder than absolute zero" because by definition that's impossible. I'm going to attribute that to media sensationalism.
Particles sharing energy states when they normally shouldn't? Well that's breaking a law we thought immutable. Interesting.
Now, normally entropy increases as you put heat into a system as the particles are able to exist in a larger number of energy states (more energy means more possible energy states avalible). Here, with the particles sharing the highest energy state, entropy actually decreases. This... well this changes things a lot. A system must always exchange energy sutch that the total entropy increases, so it will expel heat to outside substances, like any hot material does.
Now the article has made it seem like they achieve this state of matter by cooling it past some kind of breaking point. If that is true... well this is going to be incredible!
Capcha: good job
Well thanks Capcha! I did do my best!
I'm going to ignore the fact that it's "colder than absolute zero" because by definition that's impossible. I'm going to attribute that to media sensationalism.
Particles sharing energy states when they normally shouldn't? Well that's breaking a law we thought immutable. Interesting.
Now, normally entropy increases as you put heat into a system as the particles are able to exist in a larger number of energy states (more energy means more possible energy states avalible). Here, with the particles sharing the highest energy state, entropy actually decreases. This... well this changes things a lot. A system must always exchange energy sutch that the total entropy increases, so it will expel heat to outside substances, like any hot material does.
Now the article has made it seem like they achieve this state of matter by cooling it past some kind of breaking point. If that is true... well this is going to be incredible!
Capcha: good job
Well thanks Capcha! I did do my best!